Truly terrible film benefiting from its own hype

Rating: 1/10 (7 June 2011)

Rarely have I seen a film professing to be good that ended up being as bad as XMFC.
The back story altogether was silly and not just written to be taking place in the 60s, but seemed to be written as if the writers were living in the 60s. There was soooo much cheesy and corny crap. The yacht that turns into a submarine, the overly trusting CIA that takes super-powered people and lets them run wild recruiting kids to be super-secret agents for the government (what is this, Spy Kids?), the bad guy with the secret passageways behind the bookshelf and the table that spins around when you touch the secret panel...I mean all of that late 60s/early 70s James Bond flotsam that no one ever really did or had, but was all part of the "isn't this cool, daddio" culture of the time and so popped up in every action movie. I was waiting for there to be a mad scientist with a death-ray on the moon. So much for Vaughn's determination to bring these characters into a realistic setting.
Then, the most interesting characters were the ones most under-utilized. Havok, Banshee, Darwin, Azazel and Riptide were completely glossed over in favor of the already over-exposed characters. People complain about the X-films over using Wolverine and that they are tired of it? Well, absent him, who are the two characters most heavily utilized in the X-films? Magneto (the ever-villain, whose constant inclusion negates the use of far more interesting villains) and Xavier. The other two character focal points, Mystique and Beast, have also been done. So anyone hoping for some good character exposition on the new blood...sorry, you are S.O.L. Nothing here but the same old, same old. But then, on the topic of the characters who actually did get exposition... --Magneto. You get his initial entrance into the concentration camp, and then he is 30. 12 to 30...just like that. What happened in between? What happened between when he got liberated and the first scene with him in the hotel room spinning the coin round his fingers? It was bad story telling. They wanted him to be completely unencumbered with a job, friends, a home...anything that would ground his character in reality. They wanted him to be a clean slate of a character with one thing only: revenge on Shaw. Talk about a one-dimensional character. Plus, his turn-coat to being a bad guy was practically instantaneous. Yeah, he and Xavier had that very brief convo about mutants/humans sitting across the chess board, but that was really it. Then, a few meglo-maniacal words from Shaw in the reactor room and Magneto is ready to turn coat on the only people in his entire life that he has ever been able to call friend. Almost as silly as Darth Vader's turn in Episode III.
--Mystique...same exact problem. Her brother, best friend, only person in the world she really cares about. Not only does she betray his dream, not only does she go against every other one of her friends, but she up and leaves Xavier shot and possibly dying. I'd be one thing if she were a stalwart "mutant and proud" booster from the start, but she has only ever wanted to be normal and has known love, friendship and acceptance and she immediately turns away from her entire life and the beliefs she has had her whole life after a few kind words from a guy she threw herself at (who ultimately rejected her advances, btw). Her turn was sillier than Magneto's. At least he had the bad childhood to fall back on.
--Shaw. His motivation was wholly unbelievable. He was a completely one-dimensional villain. Why exactly did he want to do what he was planning? Here he is, a wealthy and powerful man who has never known anti-mutant prejudice due to his ability to pass for a human, as well as the fact that there was no anti-mutant prejudice at this time since mutants were an, as yet, undiscovered species. And yet, he is looking to destroy all of humanity. Oh yeah, and exactly how were the mutants to survive the nuclear holocaust? I don't recall anyone claiming all mutants were immune to radiation poisoning. So he was just a cartoonish Bond villain with no reasoning behind his motivation.
So characters were bad, style and execution of the plot was bad, action and FX were Michael Bay-esque in that it was random explosions and jump cuts that had too many things happening too fast to make an impact. Clichéd training montages. Terrible effects on Beast. Silly one-dimensional human characters. Some of the acting was passable, but some was flat out bad (January Jones, the Kravitz girl) and the ones that were good were really just OK. No stand out performances. And even if Fassbender and Macavoy could be seen as great, they weren't so good that the entire movie can hang on their performances.
Frankly, I think this film is a beneficiary of its own hype. Maybe a lot of critics who grew up in the 60s/70s were swept up in the nostalgia for their lost childhood and looked fondly on this film because of it. High critical praise and constant...never...ending...PROMOTION for weeks had people hypnotized into thinking this movie's release was going to be the event of all events. I think it got to a point where the people who were moderately excited about its release started hyping themselves up more and more at every positive review and every new trailer. Every new viral character spotlight and every crossover (come on...a Statefarm Insurance crossover?!?). Eventually, they just told themselves that this was the movie of the year and, for those people, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I'd recommend passing on this one. Hopefully, they will reboot the whole series and make an X-Men movie that does the characters justice.