Souped-up same-old

Rating: 7/10 (17 June 2011)

Sorry, folks, to be the party-pooper, but I thought this was just another comic-strip movie with brilliant CGI and better-than-usual performances. It was easy to feel that McAvoy and Fassbender would physically "grow up" to be Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart, BUT the transition from headstrong good-guy Erik to super-baddie Magneto seemed to come from nowhere. Kevin Bacon's villain was from the school of Blofeld and I liked the notion that Mutants played a key role in the 1962 Cuban Crisis (although it somewhat detracts from the brinkmanship skills of John F. Kennedy!). This is only a prequel in the sense that we saw the Mutants honing and controlling their "gifts" before pitching them against Kevin Bacon's Doctor Doom in routines that we have seen too often in Marvel comics and movies. Reminding us that Superheroes are just as insecure as the rest of us has also been done before, more successfully with Batman and Superman than with the over-angsty Spiderman. The "conversion" of Erik and Raven into Magneto and Mystique was little more than a postscript to link back to the Trilogy. Otherwise this was quite a lot of souped-up same-old. The blockbuster I'm really looking forward to this summer is Cowboys and Aliens. I also hope the Alien prequel will do a better job than X-Man: First Class; the Alien movies set a very high standard.