X-Men: First Class - TheAnimationEmpire Movie Review

Overall, it was a great story and a great movie. But that's not enough nowadays, is it?



Basically, this movie was X-Men without Wolverine, and they now know how badly they need Wolverine or an interesting character like him (Gambit or Deadpool would work) to hold a film like this. They try hard to make this film interesting with Professor X and Magneto, but the problem is that we don't really see anything new here.

As one reviewer mentioned, this film seems to cater to fans and give them what they want... by filling in the blanks from the other films. Essentially this combines the earlier "X-Men Origins: Magneto" attempts. A younger, bold Magneto and Professor X aren't the same draw as Wolverine.

Truthfully, I think a Wolverine-less X-Men movie is possible, but they would need a lot more action, interesting characters, and special effects than this to pull it off.

Overall, the movie is very enjoyable. It does have some great effects. However, despite the story and characters, it's looking to rank last in super hero films this year to three new attempts: Thor, Captain America, and Green Lantern. It's also going to rank last of the 5 X-Men movies.

In order to compete at this level, as a blockbuster film, the movie has to do more visually and has to include more over-the-top and bankable characters (like Wolverine). The story and characters are excellent, but this isn't Dead Poets Society or Good Will Hunting, this is a blockbuster superhero Marvel movie.

As far as effects go, everything we saw here was already done in X-Men 2 and/or 3. There's nothing new here in action or effects. In effects, it probably ranks close to the first X-Men film, which means it doesn't meet current expectations. It's basically an X-Men movie without newer effects and without Wolverine.

And that doesn't seem to be what the fans want.

So I think the movie did quite well because of the story and characters (despite the lack of enough action, effects, and crazy characters). Which means there's hope.

Overall, it would be a shame to see this reboot go, especially since they're continuing the present-day timeline with Wolverine (in The Wolverine) and Deadpool. These X-Men characters are great, and the story is also good.

So I definitely think they should try again and make a sequel to this. However, they are going to need more impressive action and effects (time to let Bryan Singer go to Battlestar Galactica and get writers on the team who know how to sell out to action sequences and fit it into the story better). And they're going to need to add an interesting character into the mix. Since Wolverine is already out of this timeline, they can still bring in the Cyclops and Jean Grey love story (they wasted Angel and Iceman, but maybe they can bring them back in as well). And then they also need a wildcard character, so I suggest Longshot, Gambit, Nightcrawler, Multiple Man, or Colossus, and then they also have to make them as interesting as the comics do (Nightcrawler and Colossus weren't interesting in the films so far).

As far as Disney goes, I think Marvel is going to keep the X-Men license with Fox until this X-Men series franchise dies out. As far as I can tell, they can still get one to three more films out of this New Class reboot (if they do it right), another two Wolverine movies, and then three Deadpool movies (again, if they do it right). Plus they could easily give great characters like Gambit and Nightcrawler their own films, but first they need to make them great in an X-Men movie (hasn't happened yet).

Then I think the franchise will slide over to Disney once this X-Men timeline/existence has worked through the possible films (currently Fox is making The Wolverine and Deadpool). Then hopefully they can reboot it under the Disney brand and stick closer to the comics (if you don't know, Bryan Singer butchered the timelines on all the characters in the comics and even butchered personalities of the characters to get them to fit in the stories, so a faithful reboot would actually be far more successful than this run was; so far the most faithful one to the timelines and characters was Wolverine, and I assume they will keep The Wolverine and Deadpool faithful).

And if/when the X-Men franchise slides over to Disney production (Disney owns Marvel now, so it's only a matter of time), then with the reboot they can fit the characters into the Avengers world (which might be a different world, by that time) and feature film crossovers.

Enjoy!

- The Emperor