A surprisingly good prequel

Rating: 7/10 (3 November 2011)

X-men: First Class is a very good and entertaining action movie, much better than other spin-offs from the X-men saga. In my mind, it might be the best since the original X-men, even though I missed a few of the characters from the sequels.
But being a prequel, which is always tricky, First Class does it very well. I'm actually impressed how the story was written as to be both fun and not overly evident, but at the same time keeping the integrity of the "following" movie.
Of course there are lots and lots of special effects, most of which are done very well. It fits the story, and never feels out of place. Maybe not too hard to accomplish since a story like this needs a lot of special effects.
I liked many of the "new" characters as well. Not being familiar to the comic X-men world I can't say if they're true to the comic, but they felt right in the movie. Not sure if they can return in an eventual sequel since they do not appear in the "original". They have also found a good cast to the characters, McAvoy does it good as a young Xavier, but can't unfortunately not really compare to Patrick Stewart. Then Fassbender is better as Magneto. Lucas Till and January Jones fits their characters nicely, but perhaps best is Kevin Bacon as the villain Shaw. Bacon is underrated and it is nice to see him in a leading role.
In all this is an entertaining movie, mostly because of good action. It is not as good in the humor and one-liners as the original, mostly delivered there by Wolverine, whom does have a cameo though. It is a very good prequel though, and I would be interested to see if and when they continue the saga.
7/10