A fun movie

Rating: 7/10 (7 June 2011)

By itself, this movie does it's job. However, if you start considering the other x-men movies, this movie starts to fall short. There are several scenes and events in this movie that do not match up to suggested or explicitly mentioned in the other movies. To be fair, some of these events could be temporary, and further x-men origins style movies could resolve many of these inconsistencies. But.. the movie does well on it's own and doesn't really need the others to explain it. Which makes sense since it is a prequel of sorts.
In the x-men mythology, professor X and magneto were supposed to originally be friends. But this really is not explored well in the movie at all. The bulk of the movie takes place in such a short time frame, the characters just don't seem to build that connection or friendship. They seem friendly, but not close friends as suggested by the mythology. Towards the end there are a few events that are supposed to build off of the strong bond implied by the movie, but again, it just doesn't work because the movie didn't build that strong friendship. If you are familiar with the general story, there are expected reactions, but anyone unfamiliar is likely to wonder why they are acting so out of character.
Magneto's and Professor X's personalities are explored a little bit and generally do a good job. Not as well I think with Magneto. You sort of see him switch his a couple of times in the movie and it does leave you with this weird out of place feeling. I think that is a big part of the reason why the movie fails at building the friendship between the two characters.
If you are a hardcore x-men fan, I think you will be left with some disappointment. But if you go with an open mind and don't look at it so seriously, it is a fun and entertaining film worth watching. There are many x-men classic characters that have appearances, which are always fun to see. One of X-Mens' themes is diversity, and this movie is no exception. It seems to be more predominate in this movie compared to the others. Which is well placed.