David Cameron assembles the C-(list) Men

Rating: 3/10 (28 August 2014)

X-Men: First Class is a typically slick product of modern Hollywood; well made in its own way, but rather flat. It is one of those films that the more you think about it, the worse it becomes. Things happen because they look 'cool' in the moment rather than make sense.
Nice to see what David Cameron was up to in his Bullindon Club days before he became UK Prime Minister. James McAvoy does an astonishingly good impersonation of him, only more slippery and creepy, if that's possible. But it seems to undermine the great Professor X that he should be using his telepathy to seduce girls, something of a low trick and one that cannot be merely dismissed as youthful high jinks. Perhaps he should call himself Professor Sex instead.
I can certainly see why fans of the comic are appalled by the lack of fidelity to the original but I can also see why the film makers would want to go their own way. It is amazing, however, that they would choose such a crew of c-listers (with a few z-listers), some of whom are very little known even among comic fans. And like many badly written films, it leaves more questions than answers.
Why was Havok chosen in preference to his brother Cyclops? Who are Angel and Darwin?
Considering this is a PG-13, isn't the level of violence very disturbing, especially the slo-mo murder of Sebastian Shaw at the end, but also the indiscriminate killing of humans in the compound? Why would Shaw take the time and trouble to break into the compound, mass murdering people, say to the mutants "you're either for us or against us" then leave with only one mutant (the feeblest one at that) leaving these potential enemies alive? He even makes it even worse by killing one of them for little reason thus angering the rest?
Why for that matter is the one black character in the film seem there merely to be killed off as quickly as possible? He seems to go unmourned by the x-men as do the humans in the compound. Why is the potential massacre of sailors at the end seen as worse than this actual massacre in the compound which the X-men do nothing about?
Why does Mystique walk away from her oldest friend (Professor X) when he's just been crippled? It probably says a lot for the banality of the script that just about the last line in the film is David Cameron saying "I can't feel my legs".