Pretty good contextual movie

Rating: 7/10 (3 June 2011)

Better scripted than X-Men: The Last Stand, and about equal with X-Men Origins: Wolverine. So by that rule of thumb if you hated the Wolverine movie then you'll probably hate this one; if you really enjoyed the Wolverine movie (as I did) then you have a good chance of enjoying this one. It created a good context for Magneto's behavioral origins, as well as his use of power. I thought that was well thought out.
Unfortunately they compromised their quality script with a glaring continuity problem -- Charles Xavier is in a wheelchair by the end of this movie, which takes place in the 60's, but he was seen in another movie as a much older Professor X (Patrick Stewart) walking... I'm not referring to his walking in a telepathic state, as in the original X-Men movie, but actually walking in a flashback to the '80's in X-Men: The Last Stand, when he and Magneto discovered Phoenix.
So either the filmmakers were ignorant of this issue (which is surprisingly possible -- you'd be frightened to learn how little some filmmakers know about the material they are assigned to direct or produce or even write!), or they chose to ignore this continuity problem (as many filmmakers do), or they plan on having him walk temporarily at some point later in life, in some fashion that will be explained... But I doubt the latter. It's more likely that the filmmakers decided to do what ever they wanted to do, and believe that their own story shouldn't be confined by any franchise continuity -- it's an ego thing, not a logical thing. Happened in Star Trek all the time. Could also be that they decided they hated X-Men: The Last Stand and chose to ignore just that particular movie, which is also not unprecedented. (The makers of Jaws: The Revenge chose to ignore Jaws 3-d, but it was just as terrible.)
But if you are willing to look past that, this is well worth seeing at the theater.