It's okay. Not brilliant, but better than Origins: Wolverine

Rating: 7/10 (7 June 2011)

The latest X-Men movie is okay. The best one is still X-Men 2. #1 was good. #3 sucked. Origins: Wolverine was disappointing, and the latest effort is not too bad. Unfortunately, though, there's nothing really good about it either.
Other than charting the rise of Professor X and Magneto, it's all a bit dull, I found. It lacks drive and at times feels more like a rehash of concepts from the first 3 in the series, rather than the exploration of something new.
It takes place during the Cold War, which is because it's really the last event after World War 2 that the US wasn't facing unpopular coverage over. Unfortunately, the Cold War, and specifically the Cuban Missle Crisis doesn't really resonate that much anymore.
The story was written partly by Bryan Singer (who worked on the first 2 X-Men films before Brett Ratner insulted us with X-Men 3), and it's a little out of sync with both X-Men 3 and Wolverine, not that it matters too much however.
The cast all do okay. I was afraid that it was going to descend into a teen flick with all the mutant kiddies, but it managed to steer away from that.
Kevin Bacon stars as the antagonist, but he's largely useless (apart from inexplicably going from a German accent to an American accent) and somehow becoming a super-mutant.
Overall the script was okay, but lacked a certain something. It's hard to put my finger on it, but it just seemed a bit light and a bit shallow. The mutant powers were all a bit weak on the goodies' side, whilst the baddies had the cool stuff.
Overall, 7 out of 10.