Good, but let's not get carried away . . .

Rating: 8/10 (3 June 2011)

Overall, this was a good action film featuring characters I enjoyed and cared about with an adequate story. This movie is being overrated as giving The Dark Knight a run for its money, as being the movie of the year, movie of the decade ... seriously? First Class (FC) is no Dark Knight, no Batman Begins either. I honestly can't say right now whether I enjoyed Thor or X2 more than FC (I'll have to watch them over again before deciding that). One problem with this movie is that it is a prequel, rather than a reboot. The flaw in having a prequel is that you already know what is going to happen in the end like what is going to happen to Xavier, Magneto, Mystique, etc. Prequels also risk creating continuity errors, which there are when compared with the other X-Men films. They should have just made this a reboot rather than a prequel. With the franchise hitting the gutter with X-Men Origins: Wolverine, a re-imagining of how the X-Men and arch-nemesis began would have been appropriate. James McAvoy's performance as Xavier was great, but I found it odd that Xavier has hair throughout the entire movie. Also, it wasn't quite explained why Xavier chooses to use his powers in certain situations and not others. There are other plot holes too like when Shaw says you're either with us or against us, kills Darwin, but doesn't go after the other mutants that didn't choose to join him. Or with Shaw's powers, why does he need a nuclear war, why is he waiting 18 years to carry out this plot, why not just absorb energy from a nuclear reactor or power plant and just start destroying mankind himself? These aren't the only flaws and I'm not going to list all of them. I'll just conclude by saying, despite its imperfections, I enjoyed FC. It, like Thor, will probably make my Blu-Ray collection along with the other X-Men movies. Clearly it is better than Wolverine (which sucked, but that's a story for another day); yet it's no Dark Knight nor Oscar contender for best film either. As much as I loved Fassbender's Magneto, I didn't get a best supporting actor vibe from his performance.