Dense drama is this summer's blockbuster to beat

Rating: 7/10 (3 June 2011)

Comparisons can be made to Christopher Nolan's reboot of Batman, where scripting and story are refined and the genre is examined. Commonly in these types of films there are scenes of obligatory rivalry, villainy, comedy, exposition, where the dialogue is clunky and the scenario is cliché. A good example of this is the movie "X Men Origins: Wolverine". A good measure of a bad script is when your characters end up in a bar. The bar is the place you write your characters when you don't have any original ideas. To my memory, there are only a couple very brief scenes in a bar in XM:FC. And these sparse bar scenes are for mainly for comedic gain.
This dense origin script knew what central themes it was examining before it set about to make action sequences. In other words, action scenes don't exist just for the sake of action. Characters have motivations that drive the action. The only place I might fault the storyline is trying to embed itself into the Cuban Missile Crisis. The antagonist seems to have free access to anywhere and can somehow easily convince the powers that be to instigate nuclear war. Fortunately, it doesn't matter since Kevin Bacon makes a great villain. I have never been a big fan of Kevin Bacon, but he shines in certain moments, like in "Mystic River" or "Animal House". Here he is allowed to be creepy in a very convincing way, almost making the extra aspect of possessing special powers unnecessary.
Although there is much buzz about Michael Fassbinder (I raved about him myself in my review of "Inglorious Basterds"), I was impressed by the performance of James McAvoy. He takes on the persona of a younger Sherlock Holmes. He is convincing when he puts his fingers to his temple in order to project his mind. This type of activity could easily come across as silly if not approached properly. The Magneto character without much surprise is as strong as Darth Vader in screen presence. The audience almost trembles as Magneto occupies the screen, ready to get angry at his past.
One thing about this tentpole film is that it resembles the original X Men film, where emphasis was placed on character instead of action. Both these films have limited action sequences. It is actually refreshing to not require some over-the-top CGI to have a good time during the summer blockbuster season. Case in point is the noisy "Transformers 2", where it was just meaningless nonstop destruction. The director Matthew Vaughn infused elements of his strong film "Kick Ass" into XM:FC. There are scenes where teenagers work out together their issues, sometimes not knowing if their choices are the right answer. Teenage struggles work as a metaphor with having special powers. They struggle with their identity, deal with sexuality, and personal appearance. It takes very dedicated script writing to flesh out the large number of characters being juggled around in this story. Much credit must go to the screenplay writer, even though Bryan Singer wrote the story.
The music by Henry Jackman is hardly original, it borrows heavily from the memorable soundtrack of "Inception", including the use of guitar to add texture to the pulsing strings, etc. Perhaps big summer films require the wall-to-wall bombastic music to carry the momentum, and I won't deny it works. But you sometimes wonder if this is a situation where the editor puts temp music in, in this case "Inception", and the director gets married to it. This diminishes the ability for the soundtrack composer to come up with something unique. It even sounds like Jackman hired Johnny Marr again to do the guitar.
As for the direction, there is a lot that could have gone wrong. There is a fine balance with story pacing. You want to keep the momentum going without losing the beats necessary to establish emotion. Again, this is done to perfection in Nolan's Batman series. In XM:FC the intelligence of the main characters comes across with very competent acting. So Vaughn should be commended for getting good performances from his cast. I expect to see this film again, primarily because it has so many characters with their arcs, that I need another viewing to take it all in. All the mutants introduced in this film are given situations that are explored. The special effects are top notch, except for a couple iffy wide shots, but they are not distracting. Speaking of not distracting, I am glad the producers didn't try any hokey 3D conversion for this flick.