The Film Thugs Movie Show

Remember that girl in high school who got “engaged” to her first boyfriend in the 10^th grade. Then they broke up and she was devastated. It was the worst break up in the history of break ups. But then she starts dating another guy in 11^th grade and after a month, guess what… she’s “engaged” again. Then a few months later she sets the record for worst break up ever a second time. This time she bemoans her “bad luck” with men. And next thing you know… she’s found the right guy!!! She’s engaged again and you know what’s coming this time.

Looking back you know what the future holds. She will get engaged 10 times before she gets married for the first time, then that will fail and she will get married again. Maybe one day she will find one that will stick, but you know that’s not very likely.

What does this have to do with movies? Well, Hollywood is a lot like that girl. Something comes out that does well and it is suddenly the greatest thing ever and nobody will ever get tired of it and they will make money doing it forever and ever and ever.

It’s happened more times than I can count. Hell, it’s happening now. 3D, reboots, gritty reboots, adaptations of teen novels, vampires, all of it. It’s happened before and it will happen again.

Probably the biggest one of the past ten years would be the comic book movie. Yeah, we’ve always had superhero movies, but they were, by and large, a novelty. Every few years they would roll one out and it would be met with moderate success or failure, but there was rarely (Tim Burton’s “Batman” aside) any big deal made about them.

Then at the turn of the century (sounds cool, doesn’t it?) 20^th Century Fox made a bold move and released an X-Men movie. Right off the bat there was concern from comic fans. This is one of the longest and most complexly layered comic universes out there. There are dozens of characters with multiple incarnations and near infinite storylines. How on earth could this hope to work?

Thing is, it did work. It worked quite well. This led to a seemingly unending stream of comic movies that looked kind of awesome at first. Led by X-Men and Spider Man, which were not only good movies, but were followed up by superior sequels. Yeah, there was a lot of crap, and crap with sequels and spin offs (did anyone really want or need Elektra?), but those two seemed bulletproof. Then part 3 of each rolled around and… things got strange.

Each franchise went in a wildly different way. Spider Man went scorched earth and straight up rebooted. X-Men decided to go into backstory.

Their first attempt, X-Men Origins: Wolverine was a hot nightmare. Somehow they took the most popular and, arguably the most popular member of the team and reduced his back story to… I don’t even know what to call it. This was a character whose background was kept secret in comics for 27 years. At this moment I checked out.

So, when they announced X-Men: First Class, I was awash in apathy. They couldn’t handle the most interesting back-story and now they were going to muddy the waters with MORE people? I abstained.

Then, New Year’s Eve rolled around. My girlfriend was out of town and I came down with a touch of food poisoning and was facing a night alone on the couch. So I decided to hit up Red Box. The only things they had that interested me at all were “The Devil’s Double” (Review forthcoming), “Captain America”(Review forthcoming), and “X-Men: First Class” (whose inclusion on a lot of best of the year lists had gotten my attention).

I am so glad that I had what was, on the surface, the most depressing New Year’s Eve since 1999-2000 when I worked as a camera operator at a TV station that did a midnight broadcast, so as the rest of the world welcomed the new millennium I was one of ten people watching two very bored reporters discuss how nothing had really happened.

X-Men: First Class is a solidly made, entertaining film that shows an incredible amount of promise for any forthcoming films.

Origin stories are difficult because there needs to be a balance between the hero actually becoming the hero, and the hero actually doing something specific. You have to introduce a villain and make them real while incorporating the existing canon. It’s a difficult prospect that this film pulls off brilliantly.

In essence it is a three-tier creation story with a common villain. The first two creation stories are by far the most important to the X-Men world. We see the very different backgrounds of Charles Xavier (Professor X) and Eric Lensherr (Magneto). Charles grows up INCREDIBLY privileged. Early on he befriends Mystique and they grow up well educated, safe, and loved. We meet Eric shortly after the events that began the first X-Men movie, where he is ripped, screaming, from his parents arms at the gates of Auschwitz. His grows up tortured, exploited, and subjected to the worst of humanity.

Chance brings them together to face an enemy bent of the destruction of the planet and the subjugation of humanity. They join forces, and together create the third tier of the story by working with a group of young mutants, forming the first incarnation of the X-Men.

There is a lot more going on, but that’s the broad strokes of it.

This is a gutsy film. Magneto spends a large portion of the film as a sullen loner bent on vengeance. However, at no point is he painted as a cartoonishly evil stock villain. I found myself siding with him most of the time, and even if I didn’t side with him I understood why he was acting the way he was. This is no mean feat. Creating a villain, even the early stages, is difficult. Creating one that your audience can truly understand is nearly impossible. But they pull it off.

Charles is portrayed as an idealist who believes that mutants can work with humanity to better the world. Of course he does, this is a man who grew up with people being nice to him so naturally he things that people are inherently good.

Stuck between them is Mystique, who is struggling to find her identity. She was raised like Charles, but due to her appearance has always felt the sting of humanity’s fear and ugliness that Eric grew up with. Her relationship with Hank McCoy (Beast) provides the hear of the film, as they both question how to exist in a world that does not accept them as they struggle to accept themselves.

That is really the strength of this film. Yes, it deals brilliantly with the technical, nuts and bolts aspect of the creation story, but it makes it about more than just creating a team. The X-Men comic has always been about more than action and adventure. It has, at its heart, been about a struggle for acceptance (both external and internal), identity crisis, self-preservation, the dangers of extremism and racism, the search for commonality in a world of infinite diversity, and ultimately how to find peace in a world that doesn’t make sense. This film deals with all of these themes quite deftly. It’s never preachy, but it gets the point across.

Ever the optimist, there is a part of me that really hopes that this film is a new beginning for this type of film. That perhaps now quality will work its way into the product mill that is comic book film, and it might be. But if we are honest with ourselves, this probably won’t be the case. That being said, I am still very happy that we got this one, because no matter how bad the ensuing sequels (and we all know they are coming) may or may not be, at the very least we have one solidly entertaining and engrossing film. Those are far too hard to come by these days.