X-Men: First Class

I happily report adoring X-Men: First Class.  As superhero movies go, it ranks dangerously close to the original Iron Man -- in that it's really good as a just plain movie, which happens to go all superhero on you as the plot requires.  


(I should admit here that I honestly don't give a crap about whether it was faithful to the comic books.  My experience with X-Men is limited to seeing the other movies (once each, when they came out) and remembering ... well, remembering just enough about them for me to think this one fits seamlessly into the set, and to laugh at all appropriate references.)

But it does a fantastic job of establishing the relationship between Charles Xavier and Erik (soon-to-be Magneto) -- a relationship which I can only describe as "complex," and good for them, really, for going into that level of grey in a big summer action movie.


I can't entirely describe what was so terrific about it without being really, really spoilery, so I'll just be all sorts of obtuse and say that, a couple times in the movie, there's a really clunky piece of dialogue, which made me think, "Wow, that's a really clunky piece of dialogue."  But, ultimately, there's a third piece of clunky dialogue, which is simultaneously the most wrong thing that could possibly be said at that moment, and also the most right one.  The movie hinges on it, really.  And, in retrospect, it made me forgive the earlier badly-written lines, because you almost needed a small trail of bad lines in the movie, so that the ultimate one didn't sound like it was coming completely from left field.  Very neatly done.


My audience applauded at the end of the movie.  Most of us stayed through the credits, too, as we've been trained to expect a post-credits scene.  There wasn't one -- and, during the credits, I was questioning if there would be.  The film was so complete as it was, I couldn't think of anywhere else they could go with it.  

Yeah.  Likin' me some X-Men.