Solid action, overrated film

Rating: 6/10 (2 June 2011)

It definitely got the action right, and it's so loaded with fancy mutant superpowers that any X-Men fan will surely love it. The pacing is good, both directing and acting are decent, and overall it does have the potential to deliver a great deal of entertainment to sci-fi and action lovers. Unfortunately, it's also pretty far from a perfect film. The plot is predictable, the scriptwriting is extremely cheesy, and several themes were copied directly from X-Men (2000) and X2 (2003). Predictable? Given that it's a prequel the ending is bound to be given, but when everything until then is about equally obvious, the narrative clearly has a problem. Cheesy? This film has so many so awkwardly unnatural and over-the-top dramatic lines it's almost physically painful to watch at times. Unoriginal? The fact that the entire background for Erik is based on the same themes as the background for Wolverine as presented in X2, and that this background defines the recurring themes of First Class speaks for itself. The thing that bothered me the most, though, was that the film encompassed so many interesting stories and managed to connect them and properly attach them to the main story - but that it constantly felt like it never got the chance to actually explore any of them sufficiently to make them more than superficial add-ons. Could it be that what the narrative here really needed was less action, less superpowers, and more emphasis on the actual characters?