X-Men Rising

Rating: 4/10 (4 June 2011)

Those who state X-Men: First Class is the best of the five X-men movies apparently haven't seen any of the first four.
Admittedly, it's better than X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and everyone has a right to their own opinion, but come on. This movie suffers from being too long, too much story – for a superhero film, too little relevance and not enough of the exciting X-Men we've become accustomed to.
Yeah, I'm aware it's an origin storyyet ANOTHER X-Men origin story (boy, do they like to tell origin stories verses just continuing onward, which I would prefer)but this came off way too much like another unnecessary prequel: Hannibal Rising.
I don't want to sound too harsh, because First Class is superior to similarly scripted Hannibal's "Fun with the Nazis" Early Years. I'm just getting kinda sick of the back stories. In the previous four X-Men films we had bits and pieces of the history of the characters, but none as the exploited and blatant as Wolverine's. While I loved the character of Wolverine, it was refreshing that First Class chose NOT to explore, once again, how he got that adamantium or who created him or why he lost his memory or
PLEASE tell me there isn't gonna be a Second Class film. Can you please do present tense? Do you have so little faith in the X-Men that they always have to go backwards and never forward? As much of a Superman fan I am, I would be thoroughly upset if the next four Supe movies deal with life on Krypton and/or yet another Smallville retelling. Move on!
Further, in what is beginning to look like the George Lucas Space Saga, we keep going backwards after it began forwards with the original trilogy. 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine is set before the first three and this one, before that. Where are we headed? The "evolved" fish that leaves the sea and supposedly and eventually becomes man? (Ironically, there is, in fact, a mutant named "Darwin" in First Class.)
That all said, the movie isn't exactly terrible. It absolutely could've been cut by a half hour –or any editing: the movie also suffered from poor editing. But the performances were decent, the "surprise" visits and homage was cute at points and the CGI/special effects were good.
The basic plot revolves around the rise of (the soon-to-be Professor) Charles Xavier (James McAvoy – who, while good, is NOWHERE near the talent or charisma of Patrick Stewart), the revenge-filled Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto (Michael Fassbender, who, AGAIN, isn't close to the performance of Ian McKellen and channeled a bit too much of Hugh Jackman's Wolverine) and the Cuban Missile Backdrop. Meanwhile, good/bad/indifferent/boring – especially the bad – mutants band together to come up with neat nicknames and explore their powers. Somewhat.
While I did have fun when Charlie and his pal Erik find other similar mutants and further, when they're being "trained" while the two leads bicker, the rest of the movie was like a "based on the series" direct-to-DVD that is for fans-only and could easily only be watched once. I might watch again, but it would have to be a TV-edited version.
As for the whole series, I vote for true believers to stick with the originals. X2: X-Men United is still the best, followed closely by the original X-Men. Even though, at first, I didn't care for the third installment, X-Men: The Last Stand, upon re-watching, I actually had a lot of fun during that. (If I had known what was coming, I would've appreciated it even more.)
Skip X-Men Origins: Wolverine, for you see his "origins" in the previously mentioned films multiple times, anyways. And finally, for X-Men: First Class: it's worth a viewing, but it can certainly wait for it to hit home videoand for die-hard fans only.