Glass

Glass Action

Glass
2019 USA
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
UK cinema release print.

Well this is somewhat disappointing, it has to be said.

I have a kind of love/hate relationship going with the films directed by M. Night Shyamalan. As a director I think he’s brilliant... able to tell his stories with a visual simplicity that communicates his intentions very quickly and easily. Alas... the stories themselves are generally very predictable... ranging to about 10 - 20 minutes into The Sixth Sense before you can easily figure out the ‘twist’, right the way through the ‘obvious scale’ of... at the start of the second camera shot in The Village, which immediately gives away the ending of that movie. I think the only time he ever really caught me out... and it’s a good thing when he does, by the way... was with Unbreakable, where the slight twist of Mr. Glass turning out to be a super villain actually hadn’t occurred to me. Consequently, Unbreakable has always been the film which I have held in the highest regard of his films (that and Devil which, ironically, he only wrote and didn’t direct himself).

Alas, the stealth sequel to Unbreakable released a couple of years ago, Split (reviewed here), which only revealed itself to be such during the cameo of Bruce Willis for the last few seconds of the post-credits scene... while having amazing central performances by Anya-Taylor Joy and James MacAvoy... was somehow pretty mediocre, I thought, in terms of the story. However, at least that one did right by the characters these two played. When both these two return with their characters in Glass, I dunno, it felt like they’d lost something in translation and become more cardboard in their intent as merely ‘story functions’ as opposed to three dimensional characters. And I don’t believe that’s due to the performances, because they are still excellent. I think it’s either due to the writing being somewhat less willing to explore what’s going on in their heads or, just as likely, that a lot of footage was cut, which may well have been character building stuff (I understand the first cut of this, like most movies, was a lot longer that the final release print).

They are joined, of course, by Bruce Willis reprising the central superhero character and Samuel L. Jackson as super-villain Mr. Glass. Both are excellent but Willis’ understated character seems a little too subtle here, I felt. He’s probably the least interesting character in the movie and comes off the worst of the three. Jackson’s Mr. Glass, on the other hand, seems to be the only one in the film who really sticks to his guns, so to speak, and really resembles the character he played in Unbreakable but... yeah, at the end of the day, all these characters are kind of wasted, in my opinion, in an endgame by the director which probably isn’t going to be a crowd pleaser when it comes to fans of the series as a whole, I suspect.

They are also joined by Spencer Treat Clark (still playing Bruce Willis’ son in the 19 years since the first movie), Charlayne Woodard  (reprising her role as Samuel L. Jackson’s mother, even though she is younger than him in real life, I believe) and Sarah Paulson as the psychiatrist who is seen to be trying to cure the three main protagonists/antagonists from what they are supposed to believe is a delusion of their super powers.

Shyamalan also makes a cameo appearance playing the same character he played in Unbreakable and, it turns out, also the same character he played in Split. So that must be an unusual film statistic, to have the director play the same cameo character three times in three different movies. Has anybody else done this? He also puts in flashback scenes from footage that didn’t make it into Unbreakable (much the same way as Coscarelli does in some of his Phantasm films) so that’s kind of a nice thing to do.

Once again, though, the director puts things across very nicely visually but, I think, his strength is also his weakness because the way he positions certain characters in the spotlight means he gives the game away far too soon. In this case, when I saw the trailers for Glass I was pretty sure there was going to be a twist ending (of sorts) and I was pretty sure I could tell from the promotions what that reveal would be. Alas, it’s even more obvious in the movie which, actually, starts out really well but when a certain character shows up very early on, you know something fishy is going on right from the start. Just as you know that, despite appearing to be a vegetable for the first half of the movie, Samuel L. Jackson’s character already has his brain working so he can stay one step ahead of the so called ‘twist’ before it, eventually, happens at the end of the film. And that’s pretty much the main reason, I think, why I’m so down about this movie. I was looking forward to something at least worthy of the original film and, instead, we have something which really isn’t even as good as Split.

The other thing is that the sleight of hand of a big, final showdown of the movie is teased but never used and that’s a deliberate mechanism of the plot... fair enough. However, it also sets the audience up, in an age of very good superhero movies dominating the International Box Office receipts, for a big ‘final fight’ when, in fact, we’ve already witnessed it... we just didn’t know it yet. Glass finishes with a bit of a damp squib of an ending and, although the implications of the very last scene are quite a nice thing to end on in some ways, I just felt like the writer had betrayed the characters in the original movies and pulled the rug from under the audience when, it has to be said, the audience wasn’t even standing there anymore... they’d mostly all figured it all out from either the trailer or from very early on in the movie. So, yeah, a less than satisfying conclusion to a movie which, I feel, drops the ball quite often and says the one or two things it has to say in a fairly lethargic and slightly dull way.

And I’m really sorry I have to say that but, there you have it.

West Dylan Thordson provides a nice score which includes thematic elements from James Newton Howard’s original Unbreakable score and, presumably, his own score for Split (although I wouldn’t know since, like Glass, it didn’t get a proper CD release, just a download thing, so I haven’t had the opportunity to listen to it away from the movie). It’s an appropriate score, though, and serves the film well in a lot of scenes.

And... that’s all I’ve got to say about Glass. I was disappointed and I suspect that I may not be alone in that. Glass is not a big budget looking superhero film and it certainly feels like it belongs to the same universe as Unbreakable but, at the same time, seems like a dumbed down version of it with maybe a little less icing on the cake than may have been required to make this a fun, entertaining, cinematic experience. Which it pains me to say but... well there you are. I hope this film does well at the box office for Shyamalan because I think that, even though some of the movies are a bit dull, he does provide some beautiful visual moments and I would like to see him mature as a writer. Alas, this doesn’t hold up as one of the great Shyamalan movies I’ve seen and I just hope he can go somewhere more interesting from here.

X-Men - Days Of Future Past

Future, Past Caring

X-Men - Days OF Future Past
2014 USA/UK
Directed by Bryan Singer
Playing at UK cinemas now.

Warning: Big spoilers in this one and I’m not even going to apologise for them... this is no more than this dreadful movie deserves to “call it out” to people.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote that, “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” It’s strange but, I’ve only ever heard that quoted, usually incorrectly (from people who have remembered it wrong), by film-makers trying to defend the outrageous continuity errors evident in their films which their audience has had to point out to them. I have to say that, in terms of the context within which people quote this about their big screen stories, I have to disagree and bring my own inner hobgoblin to the table, in this case.

I believe that a film franchise succeeds or fails on a lot of different factors on a film by film basis but, one of the things which is really important, and which can kill a whole franchise if you let it, is consistency... in this case, the consistency of continuity. And, unfortunately, the X-Men franchise has now, as far as I’m concerned, sacrificed itself for a quick buck on the altar of the hobgoblins who were really only interested in having a good time at the movies but, instead, are forced to hold a mirror up to the movie and say... “Seriously? You think your audience are all this stupid?”

Before I rip into this awful mess properly, I just want you to know how I stand on the previous films in the franchise, so you can see where I’m coming from and judge my thoughts on X-Men: Days Of Future Past (or X-Men: Days Of Screwing The Continuity Even Further While Pretending To Solve It And Hoping Your Audience Doesn’t Think About The Movie For Too Long, as I now call it) so you can either agree or disagree with my thoughts in terms of this movie’s place compared to the others.

X-Men: Bryan Singer’s first movie was pretty much the first movie based on a Marvel comics property that was actually any good. Not just good, pretty damned brilliant, as it happens. It almost made up for not having the proper characters from the 1960s in it and changing the costume design... well... yeah, almost makes up for it. Something to note: Professor X and Magneto built Cerebro together, when they were friends, in this continuity.

X2: X-Men 2: This was at least as good as the first movie. Another brilliant piece of modern fantasy action from Bryan Singer with a strong opening and a strong ending leading into something very dark and with a consistent tone throughout. Basically, an epic feeling movie to set up the Dark Phoenix character arc.

X-Men: The Last Stand: This was awful. Brett Ratner took over the franchise and basically used every great set up from the previous films and managed to make them pretty boring and unwatchable for, pretty much, most of the film. A lot of people haven’t forgiven this movie for being so bad, as far as I can see. Something to note: Young “bald” Professor X and his friend, Young Magneto, go to recruit Jean Grey together. Professor X can both walk and simultaneously use his mutant powers. In this movie, Charles Xavier is killed/disintegrated, although his mind seems to have jumped into a “different” human being... if the post credits sting is anything to go by.

X-Men Origins - Wolverine: A lot of people didn’t dig this movie but I thought it was okay. A lot of fun and very much like an old 1980s or 1990s “straight to video” kind of B Movie.... but with an A Movie budget to play around with. Thought this was much better than the reaction it got. Things to note: Professor X is in this one too, at the end. My review is here.

X-Men: First Class: Absolutely brilliant. Had a lot of continuity errors which could not be explained as a hangover from the previous films but since it was technically a reboot of the franchise, I was happy with this when treated as a stand alone sequence of movies. Things to note: In this timeline, Magneto and Professor X did not build Cerebro. Professor X is crippled by the end of their first big adventure and way after he and Magneto were still friends, confounding the opening of X-Men: The Last Stand totally. My review is here.

The Wolverine: Nice little movie. Not as fun as the last one but different and kinda interesting. Things to note: Wolverine's adamantium claws are severed and are no longer something he has in this “continuity”. Instead, he has reverted back to the bone claws he was born with as a result of the events depicted in this film. Jean Grey haunts his dreams after he killed her in X-Men: The Last Stand. Also, Professor X and Magneto confront Wolverine in an airport in the post credits sting of the movie. Wolverine looks shocked because, obviously, Professor X is dead, isn’t he? At least, his body was destroyed. My review of this one is here.

Okay. Recap over.

So here we have X-Men: Days Of Future Past. And all I wanted from this movie right now is for it to fix all those stupid continuity holes from the clashes between the awful X-Men: The Last Stand and the amazingly cool X-Men: First Class... and in a fairly fun manner, if possible. And, if only the writers would have thought about it a little more, maybe they would even have nailed that because, frankly, while a bit silly, the central premise they use to wipe out the history of the characters in this one really works well... except it fails before they even start using it.

I can see how the idea here was maybe “borrowed” from the rebooted Star Trek films from a couple of years ago. In the first one (reviewed here), the Spock of the regular timeline is catapulted back into his past, which then changes the future of the younger versions of himself and his friends... thus giving the franchise new life to go back to the days of Kirk, Spock and McCoy in their prime for a movie series without having to worry about contradicting anything that came before. Revelling in that, in fact, by having a half remake of Star Trek II - The Wrath Of Khan for their sequel (reviewed here) and totally having their cake and eating it at the same time. And why the older version of Spock didn’t just wink out of existence because his timeline didn’t actually happen anymore, I’ll never know. Oh, yes I do... because they don’t care about the logic at the heart of the theory of time travel. Okay, whatever.

Singer’s approach in X-Men: Days Of Future Past is to have Wolverine’s “mind” sent back to his younger body in 1973 and get him to change the past then, to split everything off into a new timeline which doesn’t result in the death of mutant kind... and you know what? That could have worked out really well, and the film-makers obviously seem to think it did.. or they never would have released this shambles into cinemas in this form. But the thing is, to have someone sent back from the future to change that timeline... you need to have that future actually be a possibility in the first place. That reality has to have existed before you go back and change it... and there’s no way the point in time that Wolverine is sent back from could actually have happened within the continuity of the previous films without a lot of explaining away of certain things... and there’s absolutely no concession to this, nor concession to audience intelligence, in the movie.

It starts off well enough with concentration camp imagery of imprisoned and dead mutants (and potential mutants) and this is, of course, a nice echo of the World War II Nazi concentration camp sequences which open both the original X-Men and X-Men: First Class. So a really nice idea there from the director. Then we have a fairly cool fight which is basically just a set up to explain the major time travel element  in the film. And then we see the last surviving mutants holed up together, awaiting the coming of the deadly Sentinels. Among these mutants are Kitty Pride, Ice Man, Professor X, Magneto, Storm and Wolverine. They are, of course, the X-Men... well... err... X-Men and X-Women... except... woah... hold on a minute... who’s in that line up again?

I got really excited by the post-credit sting at the end of The Wolverine because the story confronted us with something that was just so impossible within the actual X-Men timeline... Professor X and Wolverine existing in the same continuity after the events of X-Men: The Last Stand... that I figured they must be really confident about undoing the mess they’d made of the consistency between the movies. If they could throw something like that in to be explained away in the next film then... hey... they could do anything.

But that’s the thing, guys and gals. This opening set up is why the whole premise of this movie fails totally. Not only don’t they explain it... they don’t even refer to the events depicted at the end of The Wolverine in any way, shape or form. They just act like the third film didn’t even happen... kinda. Stay with me here because it’s an important concept to get over. Wolverine’s claws in this version of the timeline are back to being adamantium claws. Yep... that’s right... it’s like the events of The Wolverine, released only last year, didn’t even happen. Except... here’s the rub... The Wolverine refers all the way through to Logan’s guilt at having to kill his beloved Jean Grey to save humanity and... err... mutantanity from certain doom. So we know that happened in that continuity. However, in this film, Wolverine also has painful memories of killing Jean Grey (or Dark Phoenix or even, my favourite, Marvel Girl) in that third movie... they actually use clips from it as flashbacks in this one. So then... Professor X is dead isn’t he? This makes no sense. And you can’t try to justify/explain this version as being a version in which the events of the third movie never took place, because they refer to that movie a number of times.

And that’s basically why this movie is screwed before it’s even started. Because the point in time from which our intrepid hero is travelling back from in his mind is absolutely not a reality which could have happened and no attempt is made to explain this. What, they thought we were going to be all overjoyed that most of the old crew were back that we wouldn’t notice the thing has no logic or reason to it at all?

Not only that but, at the end, Wolverine’s mind snaps back to the version of himself fifty years later in a timeline we haven’t seen and all his memories of those fifty years are replaced by his old ones (which is why he’s astonished to see people like Jean Grey and Cyclops back in his timeline). This also makes no sense... his mind didn’t have anywhere else to snap back to... his timeline was destroyed. Serious clangers all round here folks.

Okay, so now I’ve reiterated why the film just totally falls apart and screws the entire franchise sideways into a cocked, adamantium hat... what’s the movie like apart form the huge plot holes?

Well... it’s kinda okayish, in some ways. It’s got a good buzz about it early on but, ultimately, it all just felt a bit “by the numbers”. Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Halle Berry and Ellen Page were all fine... but that was it for them. They were all just fine... and who can blame them in some ways. Their dialogue wasn’t exactly special. Ditto for most of the First Class team. Michael Fassbender is always damned watchable but he honestly didn’t seem to be present in most of his scenes, apart from when he loses it at Charles Xavier on the plane... that was pretty good. Jennifer Lawrence’s take on Raven/Mystique was okay too but she’s flying more or less solo in this one and, although she’s a bit of a stand out character, she’s mostly just seen beating people up.

James MacAvoy is fantastic and just like his Xavier character in X-Men: First Class. Absolutely a consistent and brilliant performance. However, asides from the cool acting, theres another basic continuity problem with this one. We saw him crippled at the end of the last movie but, in this one, Hank/The Beast has made him a serum which gives him his legs back every time he has his fix. However, this also has the side effect of relieving him of his mutant powers... further highlighting the absolute impossibility of the opening sequence of X-Men: The Last Stand as a path from this reality... except we know all that must have happened because Wolverine’s mind was just sent back from that future reality. Not very well thought out, is it? It’s like the writers kept painting themselves into a corner and then were trying to distract you with things to cover up the fact that they couldn’t address the issues this throws up. But hey, who cares, the audience won’t be paying attention will they? Um, whatever dudes.

There were some other nice things about the movie. The idea that Magneto was implicated in the murder of JFK but was actually trying to save him because he was a fellow mutant was nice. Some, not all, of the action sequences were nicely handled too, the really good ones being the opening fight scene and the sequence where Quicksilver saves them all in the Pentagon jailbreak scene. Which is a pretty great scene... except... oops. Now that’s another confusing thing for audiences who don’t understand that the rights to certain Marvel characters reside with more than one company...

So here you have Quicksilver who is played by Evan Peters in X-Men: Days Of Future Past.... which is a Marvel/20th Century Fox picture. However, we just saw him portrayed by Aaron Taylor-Johnson in the first mid-credits sting at the end of Captain America: The Winter Soldier (reviewed here), made by Marvel/Disney, and will see him portraying that character again in The Avengers: Age Of Ultron next year, also for Marvel/Disney. What’s worse is, the 20th Century Fox version of the character and the Marvel/Disney version of the character are not allowed to share the same history, The ones locked into the S.H.I.E.L.D timeline is not even allowed to mention “mutation” apparently. This is going to confuse a hell of a lot of audience members who don’t know the ins and outs of the situation, folks. All they’re going to know is you’ve got the same character played by two different actors with contradicting histories co-existing at the same time in cinema history. Probably not a great idea guys.

Okay, what else. Well, the music is okay. This one marks the first time that an X-Men movie has had the same composer twice and John Ottman’s score here reuses the X-Men theme he used for X-Men 2. Wait, what? Yeah, you can see the problem here, right? Even the music is, for one of the few rare times in a Marvel movie, insisting on a continuity which is already shot to hell. Which is a shame because Ottman’s score does the job here. It’s not as cool as his earlier X-Men 2 score, or even his two Fantastic Four scores, but it does it’s job and I’ll be grabbing a copy when the CD comes out in a couple of weeks.

And... what else? Um... the special effects are okay, if you like that kind of thing, and the film is competently shot and edited. So, some nice work there... but none of this goes anywhere near making up for the fact that this movie screws up the continuity even worse than X-Men: First Class did.

When the four sequels to Universal’s The Mummy were released in the 1940s, these sequels formed what was supposed to be a single continuity. However, some of the films took place decades after the previous one and in all that time, they were all set in contemporary America, give or take a few years. Worse, in one film, Kharis The Mummy gets buried in a swamp in one country and, when he rises from the swamp to live again in the next movie, it’s somehow relocated to another country. Now, it’s my belief that the majority of those 1940s audiences didn’t question these huge plot holes because, frankly, these were the decades well before anything like commercial home video viewing could even be imagined and re-release cinema screenings were less of a thing then. The movie played, you saw it, and it wasn’t until commercial television started out in the 1950s that these movies would get shown enough again to be able to spot stuff like this. However, note to people in Hollywoodland expecting a gullible audience to swallow the scripts they turn out with more holes in them than a Swiss cheese... your audience is no longer living in the 1940s. It’s not like somebody isn’t going to notice all this stuff somewhere along the line. You need to write smarter than this!

When I went to buy a ticket for X-Men: Days Of Future Past, for a performance a few hours later, there were a lot of firemen in the cinema and when I got to the front of the queue I was told that they were only giving out refunds. It turns out the cinema in question had been struck by lightning less than ten minutes before I’d arrived and it had knocked all the projection rooms out. When I tried again a few hours later, they’d literally just managed to get the cinema rebooted up and were selling tickets again. All I can say is... I should have taken this as some kind of omen, maybe? X-Men: Days Of Future Past is my joint, least favourite X-Men movie, tying with X-Men: The Last Stand in last place. This was not how I was hoping the latest film in a, mostly, fairly strong film series would play out and the only audience I could possibly recommend this to is an audience who haven’t seen any of the previous movies in the franchise because, honestly, this one just makes no sense. And it’s such a shame. It feels like Ridley Scott’s Prometheus (reviewed here) all over again. It just didn’t address the issues it needed to address... and these directors/writers/producers need to make a smarter product to keep the percentage of their audience interested in these things satisified, I’m afraid to say. The hobgoblins are loose... and their small minds are out to tear apart your inconsistencies.

Trance

Smooth EnTrance

Trance
UK 2013
Directed by Danny Boyle
Playing at cinemas now.

I’m not the biggest Danny Boyle fan, it’s true, but having said that, I almost always appreciate his films on some level and I very much liked his 28 Days Later. That being said, my main reason for going to see this movie was not the director, nor the majority of the excellent cast he has assembled to make this mesmerising thriller. I went to see this gig because of the always brilliant Rosario Dawson, who I first became aware of in the underrated and really quite phenomenal Josie And The Pussycats (seriously, if you want to see a really entertaining and subversive piece of propoganda about the current state of the music industry and the teenage audience it pretends to support, go see Josie And The Pussycats... such a great movie).

Trance is an ensemble piece when it comes to the acting but Rosario Dawson is, once again, the main attraction of this film, for this jaded audience member anyway, and it would certainly be true to say that she has a very “smooth entrance” in this movie... I just can’t tell you why without giving away one of the nicer surprises of the visual splendour of the film.

And visual splendour cut sharply like a diamond with some great editing is exactly what you get from Boyle here and it’s certainly one of the more addictive of the movies he’s made. Unfortunately, the main shaker and mover behind the plot is probably going to be obvious to the intended target audience even from just watching the trailer but, once you get over the fact that this film isn’t really going to surprise you all that much in terms of the deliberate and, sometimes quite elabourate, visual red herrings Boyle plugs you into in order to redirect your attention away from the truth of the plot, then you can start to watch the sometimes quite visceral image/sound poetry purely on its own terms. And frankly, the sooner in to the movie you do that, the more likely you are to have a better time with it.

Boyle uses a variety of techniques from longer, swooping visuals to hand held camera, fast edits, mixed stock treatments and differing rhythms... that he manages to make all that work without losing the interest of the viewer is a good indication of his particular talents in being able to put together a coherent entertainment for the screen. The transitory nature of the little story scenarios he builds up, before pulling them down before you, maybe gets a little tiring and just plain expected even from the outset, but this doesn’t stop there being some really nice little moments including a scene which, although you suspect it’s just a fantasy sequence already, reveals itself through such a nicely surreal and gory effect that you won’t feel cheated by the various redirection tricks going on around you as you watch.

Like a good Italian giallo (which it in no way resembles or tries to be) the deliberate blurring of the audiences focus to be able to bother following a specific line of enquiry makes for a movie where, in the end, you just won’t care who has done what... and like I said, if you saw the trailer then you probably guessed just who is on control here right from the word go anyway. Unfortunately, it’s one of the problems of the subject matter that it almost always tips itself off by its very nature but the director’s “sleight of hand” in some sequences is quite artistically and refreshingly achieved and most viewers who have an eye for visual opulence will not be too worried by the perhaps less than revealing nature of the solution to the mystery (and talking of revealing nature, there’s so much more I could say about the glamorous Ms. Dawson’s contribution to the film, especially in reference to my post title... but it’s probably best I don’t).

Trance is not a really great movie... but it’s certainly a good one and definitely one of the better distractions at the cinema right now if you want to go and see a movie which doesn’t rely totally on blowing things up (although there is some gun play and some quite raw scenes of violence on show here, to be fair). If this is your thing then Trance is probably one of the better options you’ve got at the cinema right now. Definitely something you should sample if you call yourself a fan of the medium and you want to support something British.  Who knows, it might inspire you to try to  give yourself a bit of a smooth entrance every now and again yourself.

X-Men: First Class

X-Rated Entertainment

X-Men: First Class US 2011

Directed by Matthew Vaughn

Playing at cinemas now.

Warning: There be some mild/light spoilers here that probably won’t pack as much punch as an adamantium right hook but certainly may be a little more than you want to know before going into the movie.

I’ve had kind of a hit and miss reaction to the X-Men all my life. My first experience with them was with a few reprints I had in a British annual in the early seventies which reprinted old Marvel comics called Fantastic annual. It basically reprinted almost exclusively Avengers and X-Men comics from what I remember in my hazy recollections of a dim and distant past. In fact, I believe these reprints were from the very early sixties and possibly one of them was even a reproduction of the first issue, which originally debuted in 1963. I didn’t mind this original line-up of Professor X, Marvel Girl, Cyclops, Angel, Iceman and Beast... in fact out of all the line-ups that came after, these are probably about the only X-Men I could probably handle reading today. And, of course, to me they were never the X-Men... they were always known by the title which they’d originally gone under in their early days. Much like The Amazing Spiderman, The Fantastic Four, The Mighty Thor, The Incredible Hulk and The Invincible Iron Man, these guys were... and always shall be in my mind... The Uncanny X-Men.

So when a desperate sea-change hit the title with the Giant-Sized X-Men of 1975, one last bid to actually sell these comics before total cancellation - which, given the success of the line-up introduced in this issue and their continued popularity in the medium, may surprise some people - I was never really that interested. Most of the original line-up had been dropped and Weapon-X had been rechristened Wolverine and... really... I was just as oblivious to these guys' existence as I had been to anything but those early reprints I used to read and I stayed that way, pretty much, until the first of the big budget X-Men movies hit our screens back in 2000. And to be honest I wasn’t much interested in seeing them on film either but I went to take a look anyway.

I was glad I did because that first X-Men movie was the first movie to actually take a Marvel comics character, or a set of characters in this case, and actually make a genuinely entertaining and fairly credible and coherent movie out of them. This was nothing like going to see a double bill of Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger featured with Spiderman and the Dragon’s Challenge! And when the money came in from this first one and the X-Men became a franchise... it turned out that the second movie was as good, if not even better than the first movie. The director Bryan Singer did a really good job on these two movies and had set up everything for a brilliant third installment.

Alas, a brilliant third installment was not in the cards. Singer was kinda... well not exactly fired from the franchise due to personal differences with one of the “suits with money” is my understanding but he certainly felt discouraged enough with the ensuing “lead swinging” that he eventually left to work on a superhero project for a rival company (both character-wise and studio wise... DC and Warner Bros) and another director was brought on board. The end result of all this shilly-shallying around was unfortunate... we ended up with both a really terrible dud of a third X-Men movie and... surprisingly... a not so hot Superman sequel too.

After that, everyone had thought the X-Men "juggernaut" (see what I did there?) had come to a halt but we got a little surprise with a prequel in the form of Wolverine: X-Men Origins with Hugh Jackman reprising his role as the titular character. Now Wolverine wasn’t a great movie but it was certainly several notches up on the washability level than that third X-Men film and even though it basically had the feel of an early eighties B-movie exploitation flick to a degree, albeit with a tidy sum of money thrown at it, it didn’t completely let down the franchise in the way its predecessor did (my review of that one is here if you’re at all interested).

But seriously, did we really need a fifth X-Men movie (or a Wolverine movie for that matter). Well the answer, honestly, is no! We did not. Conceptually it’s just a money making exercise trying to capture those original two lightning strikes that Singer gave the studio back at the start of the 21st Century (wow... I keep forgetting we’re all living in the 21st Century now... where’s my rocket pack?). But then follow that up with another question and you have yourself a different perspective on things.

So then, Question Number Two is... Do I mind there being yet another sequel, or in this case prequel, to the X-Men movies? And the answer to that one has to be... well, no I don’t mind as long as it’s any good. But what are the chances of that after the last big screw up on the series. A lot of people are going to be put off showing up in cinemas on account of that third movie (they have, apparently... it’s not made its money back yet... it’ll probably get there and it came in at Number One in the charts but... a disappointing Number One box office take by all accounts).

And of course, the inevitable question arising from those last two questions is this? Is it any good?

Well that’s why I write reviews like this and waffle on for a page or so before I even get to the point of writing the damned thing is my answer to that. Or to put it another way...

Yes. It’s good. it’s very, very good. But allow me to be a little more articulate in my annunciation of said conclusion...

Actually... I’ll use a tactic I’ve adopted a couple of times just recently and tell you one thing it isn’t first. It’s not a bloody reboot!

Nor is it a remake or in any way a re-imagining of the initial series... and don’t let anyone tell you it is. This one here is definitely a prequel and... not only that... but it’s a prequel in the very best sense. It’s a prequel that actually works with everything that’s been established within the chronology of the previous movies and without resorting to any George Lucas-like jiggery pokery and wild leaps of the imagination. This one is the real deal and the only retro-fitting which had to be done on this one was to set it in the sixties (during the Cuban missile crisis, in fact... which is a part of the plot) and sell that period with a certain amount of style and verisimilitude... and get it accepted by an audience that might get turned off by a period piece.

The movie starts off with the World War 2 concentration camp opening sequence of the original X-Men movie reshot (but using the late Michael Kamen’s score from that sequence from that movie) but this time you stay with the very young Erik Lehnsherr for a while and see what shaped his life choices before cutting to the very young Charles Xavier and his first encounter with Raven, aka the future Mystique. Then we skip right into the sixties and we have Charles played by James MacAvoy... who surprised me by being quite brilliant in a genre film and Erik as played by Michael Fassbender... who has more than enough screen presence to carry the whole movie on this one... except he doesn’t have to because, well I could go on but everyone on this movie was brilliant.

Fassbender starts off as pretty much a hit man, hellbent on a quest for vengeance against Kevin Bacon’s evil bad-guy and joins up almost accidentally with Xavier when Xavier rescues him at the tail end of a mission for which he’s been recruited by the CIA. The two join up with the aforementioned CIA and some other mutants and start the equivalent of Xavier’s future school to train up a group of mutants for a dangerous mission... a dangerous mission which should gain Erik access to the target of his revenge fuelled killing spree.

Frankly, for a movie with something like a 12A rated certificate, X-Men: First Class certainly doesn’t pull its punches, too often, although the revelation of a female version of Angel looks like it’s had a little censorial tinkering, for example. There are scenes of implied sexuality and more than implied violence that had my eyebrows raised at their inclusion in a family orientated movie. The scene towards the end of the movie which involves the very slow manipulation of a Nazi coin, for instance, may have been a bit out of place for the rating... but I should worry. I’m not complaining and I love on-screen violence and sexuality (and I also love off-screen sexuality so can have my cake and eat it... if I get lucky) but I do think parents contemplating taking their children to see this one should take a look at the movie first.

There’s a lot to like in this movie including some shrewd iconic references to films like From Russia With Love (if I’m not mistaken about a certain helicopter arriving at a certain kind of Manor House) and possibly a little nod to Doris Day in Caprice? There’s also a couple of great cameos from folks from previous installments... namely Hugh Jackman as Wolverine/Logan and Rebecca Romijn as Mystique. “What?” I hear you ask. “In a prequel?” Yeah, I’d be worried too... but I wasn’t because I didn’t know they were coming and as it turns out, Jackman’s appearance makes a perfect punchline to the first of two unusually lengthy montage sequences... the first is a series of Mutant spotting trips undertaken by Charles & Erik and the second is a get-a-handle-on-yer-powers training sequence. And then, the Rebecca Romijn as Mystique cameo is really cleverly done... and it involves sexuality so I’m all for it anyway.

One cameo which was missing and which felt bad to have been left out was Stan Lee. This must be the first Marvel film in the last ten or eleven years in which he hasn’t had a little appearance and that makes me sad. Apparently Twentieth Century Fox didn’t ask him to do one for this movie. He seems to roll with it though. On a Q&A panel I saw on the internet with him he jokingly said that it’s a ploy on the part of Fox to get everyone to think they’ve missed Stan’s cameo... and then go buy another ticket to see it again and try to spot him. Stan’s still "the Man" when it comes to being a true figurehead for the comics industry. A real trooper and I can’t wait to see his favourite cameo appearance in the upcoming The Amazing Spiderman later in the year.

But that’s not what I’m here to discuss... let me get back to it before I lose the plot completely.

X-Men: First Class has a real good sense of pacing and never once feels like its 132 minute running time. It explores the universe of the characters it deals with in an imaginative and satisfying way but also holds some stuff back while alluding to them in a way that leaves you intrigued rather than bored. More than enough material for a sequel and I’d really want to see one (although the box office return on this one so far makes this less likely than I’d hope for). Heck... it even has genre favourite Michael Ironside in it... although he seems to have been thrown away to very near the bottom of the credits and just credited as M. Ironside (what up with that?) but hey, he’s in it.

Also, the musical score by Henry Jackman is minimalist but quite driven and pounding and reminded me of Bernard Herrmann's technique of using small cells of melody repeated over and over for effect. This is not necessarily a bad thing and minimalist genius Philip Glass has made a decent living out of writing this kind of repeat style for decades now so I’m certainly not complaining. You’ll either love it or hate it in terms of the scoring I reckon.

X-Men: First Class definitely gets a solid and frankly, surprising recommendation from me but I do, however, feel compelled to give you final few readers who have actually made it to the end of this unexpectedly long article a final word of warning which may aid you if you see the film. If you are planning on sitting through every last second of the end credits on this one so you can watch the post-credits tag sequence which most of the other Marvel movies (the X-Men franchise included) usually have on them, then you’ll be disappointed. By all means watch the credits but don’t expect any added extras on this one... you’ll have to wait for the DVD for the bonuses this time around.