The Official X-Men: First Class Rate and Review Thread: Third Edition

[X-Maniac]

Originally Posted by The Guard

The Hellfire Club was awful.

Shaw is an okay villain, even with the changes, but there's just no excuse for reducing a great concept like The Hellfire Club like that,

Indeed. I'm hoping that in the next film(s) we get to see it is a global group and that Shaw was just one part.

[Angamb]

mmm..... not sure if I want to see another sequel with a Hellfire club plot.

[The Guard]

I don't see the point in doing a Hellfire adaption without Shaw. It was iffy enough without the others besides Emma, who was a shadow of her comic book self.

I don't think I can agree with every concept being cheap. Magneto's Brotherhood was a pretty decent operation.

Stryker's operation was every bit as good/better than its comic book version.

And The Cure was a pretty sizeable operation, as was, again, Magneto's Brotherhood.

[henzINNIT]

The Stryker story was absolute gold. I don't see many comic book purists moaning about that, because while it changed things to suit the plot, the whole film is built on very real, deeply emotional character motivation.

On paper First Class has a strong plot too but it wasn't executed anywhere near as well.

[X-Maniac]

Originally Posted by The Guard

I don't see the point in doing a Hellfire adaption without Shaw. It was iffy enough without the others besides Emma, who was a shadow of her comic book self.

There's potential, if they chose, to explore the Hellfire Club further. It goes far beyond Shaw and Emma. It could be portrayed (as in the comics) as a background organisation - a sort of secret world government or agency, like HYDRA, or like SHIELD but evil - that manipulates events and turns out to be behind many of the franchise's stories.

Stephen Lang's Sentinels were funded by the club and the male Angel's father Warren Worthington II was a member. The woman who adopts the abandoned baby Nightcrawler is also a member.

Shaw and Emma are the most well-known members, but they are far from the only ones. Check out the Wikipedia page.

I think there is scope for having Hellfire Club threading through the franchise and finally revealed to be the master manipulators. Not to mention, they would have cause to be angry at Magneto for killing Shaw and angry at Emma, Azazel and Riptide for defecting to join Magneto. It just seems like there is potential there ready to be used.

[The Guard]

Not sure any of those connections are big enough to bring them back for, but good point. I think its inclusion could be a bit awkward since Hellfire was shown to basically just be an actual club in FIRST CLASS, but you're right...there is potential for it.

[X-Maniac]

Originally Posted by The Guard

Not sure any of those connections are big enough to bring them back for, but good point. I think its inclusion could be a bit awkward since Hellfire was shown to basically just be an actual club in FIRST CLASS, but you're right...there is potential for it.

The nightclub itself was called Atomic, as shown by the sign on it when Moira and her colleague are outside. The Hellfire Club must therefore have been an organisation rather than just a building.

I think there is scope to develop it rather than scrabbling around to find another villain that suits the story.

If they used Sinister, for instance, he could be revealed (eventually) to be working for the club. It gives the nice sense of a grand, conspiratorial mythology in the background, like the shadow government in the X-Files or the Millennium Group in Millennium, etc. The Hellfire Club would either be directly involved or observing and waiting for opportunities. It just seems too good an opportunity to pass up.

If they used Sentinels, they are funded by the club.

If ever they revisited any elements of the Phoenix, then the club is involved.

If they used Psylocke, her father is a member of the club.

If Matthew Vaughn really does love his 007-style espionage, the Hellfire Club seems ideal...

[psylockolussus]

Originally Posted by Angamb

mmm..... not sure if I want to see another sequel with a Hellfire club plot.

Me too, I felt like the Hellfire Club ended when Magneto killed Sebastian Shaw.

[def28]

Yeah, It more then likely is. They will probably focus on the start of the brotherhood not continue the Hellfire club. It was pretty underdeveloped, but it worked with the film for the most part. Nothing really special about it.

[merbass]

They could complicate it further by having Emma forming her own Brotherhood and out of control especially when Emma recruited Jean, so X-men and Brotherhood will once again join hands and defeat Emma (Who has since FC became stronger)

[Zink]

This should have been a Magneto film -- straight up. The strongest moments involved Erik, and it could have easily been a solid revenge film. Wherein he converges paths with Charles. The Nazi stuff is tops, and the room for potential was vast. While Holocaust movies have been produced before -- the X-Men franchise could have taken enough left turns to warrant its inception.

The film, itself, is good. Real good. Surprisingly so as FOX has a knack for purporting the inverse "Midas Touch". They didn't screw it up, and we got a sweet X-movie out of it. The dialogue had eyeroll-inducing moments ("They didn't ask, so I didn't tell!"), but the good outweighed the bad. Emma not having a British accent worked. The actress was wooden, but she needed to be. I feel that full-on British, Alpha Female Emma Frost would have eclipsed Sebastian Shaw's presence. Banshee, Havoc, Angel, and Darwin were extremely uninspired choices. Thankfully, the film wasn't about them.

Erik, and Charles in front of the Lincoln Monument was incredible. As were all their scenes. The film's action sequences were solid, but not "Nightcrawler/White House" calibre. Despite the miscalculations -- the film does its job. It turbocharges the X-Men franchise into a POSITIVE direction.

Now rankings are for obsessive-compulsive geeks who like pretty lists, but here goes mine:

1. X-Men: First Class. Awesome.
2. X-Men. Cinematography, pace, and execution was spot-on. Plus the SCORE!
3. X-2. Monotonous pace. The villain was a mute paraplegic.
4. The Last Stand. Too much Halle Berry.
5. Wolverine. Bad.

[Loganbabe]

Originally Posted by Zink

This should have been a Magneto film

It was a Magneto film. Disguised as a X-Men film.

3. X-2. Monotonous pace. The villain was a mute paraplegic.

Well, the next film will have a paraplegic telepath. Guess you are in agreement with Vaughn that nothing can be more boring than a professor in a wheelchair.

[Nerial]

Originally Posted by Zink

This should have been a Magneto film -- straight up. The strongest moments involved Erik, and it could have easily been a solid revenge film. Wherein he converges paths with Charles. The Nazi stuff is tops, and the room for potential was vast. While Holocaust movies have been produced before -- the X-Men franchise could have taken enough left turns to warrant its inception.

The film, itself, is good. Real good. Surprisingly so as FOX has a knack for purporting the inverse "Midas Touch". They didn't screw it up, and we got a sweet X-movie out of it. The dialogue had eyeroll-inducing moments ("They didn't ask, so I didn't tell!"), but the good outweighed the bad. Emma not having a British accent worked. The actress was wooden, but she needed to be. I feel that full-on British, Alpha Female Emma Frost would have eclipsed Sebastian Shaw's presence. Banshee, Havoc, Angel, and Darwin were extremely uninspired choices. Thankfully, the film wasn't about them.

Erik, and Charles in front of the Lincoln Monument was incredible. As were all their scenes. The film's action sequences were solid, but not "Nightcrawler/White House" calibre. Despite the miscalculations -- the film does its job. It turbocharges the X-Men franchise into a POSITIVE direction.

Now rankings are for obsessive-compulsive geeks who like pretty lists, but here goes mine:

1. X-Men: First Class. Awesome.
2. X-Men. Cinematography, pace, and execution was spot-on. Plus the SCORE!
3. X-2. Monotonous pace. The villain was a mute paraplegic.
4. The Last Stand. Too much Halle Berry.
5. Wolverine. Bad.

I'm gonna have to agree with Loganbabe on this one. Although I didn't mind it as much as she did, X-men: First Class was really Magneto's story and his overall journey from tragic hero to full villain. I enjoyed it, but it's supposed to be about the X-men, which is plural, and the last time they tried to center a movie completely around one character (Logan), the movie failed. Plus, the best scenes in the movie where ones with Erik and Charles.

For the sequel, I'm hoping they'll focus more on Charles and his story arc; as I've said in previous posts, to not explore his physical loss as much as the first movie explored Erik's loss of his mother/family, would be a disservice to Charles' character.

I liked all the characters and the villains, including Emma, but felt like January Jones was not capable of really showing this "cold, calculating, powerful and intelligent" Emma--instead, she came off as a kind of a tramp, IMO.

And I think that Jason, the villain in X2, wasn't a paraplegic at all--that would mean something happened to his spine. From the huge scar on his head, I'd say he was in a wheelchair due to a brain injury given to him by his father (probably a lobotomy or something to keep him under control).

[The Guard]

FIRST CLASS was an X-Men film. A decent sized portion of it was devoted to Magneto, but that's also because Magneto helped form the X-Men in this film, and was part of the team.

[Mrs Vimes]

Originally Posted by Nerial

For the sequel, I'm hoping they'll focus more on Charles and his story arc; as I've said in previous posts, to not explore his physical loss as much as the first movie explored Erik's loss of his mother/family, would be a disservice to Charles' character.

I do hope that they deal with Charles' injury, but I very much doubt that Charles will be the focus of the movie; I don't really see the filmmakers going, right we gave Erik a great storyline in First Class, let's now be nice to Charles and focus more on him. I love the character but he doesn't really lend himself as the focus of an action-adventure series and there's a reason why there was never a plan for X-Men Origins: Professor X.

And I think that while Erik had the strongest individual character storyline in XMFC, a film that focused solely on Erik and his revenge would not necessarily have been as awesome as some people envision. IMO it worked fine the way it was in First Class - as tied into the main larger-scale plot.

I definitely don't see First Class as "Magneto film". He has strong individual scenes at the start of the film, and his storyline really comes up to the forefront in the beach sequence. But in between, the film mostly deals with the Shaw/CIA stuff and there are stretches where Erik is not even on the screen, or he's onscreen but mostly as an observer while the other characters do the talking.

[The Original Bamfer]

First Class is a six-way origin story. Most notably, the origins of Xavier and Magneto. But then we have Mystique's. And the origin of the X-Men and the Brotherhood. And, least obvious, the origin of the hostility between humanity and mutants.

This did not look like a Magneto movie that was trying to be all those other things; it was a story that seamlessly told everything it needed to, while developing the major characters fully. Xavier's not overshadowed by either Magneto or the supposedly-Magneto-centric writing. Xavier may have not been the badass of the film, but he was very much the heart. He, nor Erik, were undercut by any means. It was a film that lived up to the two central characters of all X-Men mythos... not to mention everything else the story told. There was so much that was established in the film, yet it doesn't feel muddled or rushed. And on top of it, it had a great cast of side characters which served purposes and had their own hands in the plot. It's absolutely my favorite X-film yet.

I hope they don't bring the Hellfire club back - I find that lazy storytelling. It was implied heavily that Shaw headed the secret gang of no more than four (then five) mutants, especially when you see those same mutants reigning over the earth in Emma's mind. Shaw wasn't working for or under anyone else. Whether there's a possibility that there were other henchmen out there could be speculated (though I highly doubt,) but it's unlikely that, if so, once the heads of Hellfire died/broke-up, any possible others would reform the group. The Hellfire club's over. Magneto destroyed it and reincarnated it into what will be his Brotherhood.

[Schlosser85]

Originally Posted by The Original Bamfer

First Class is a six-way origin story. Most notably, the origins of Xavier and Magneto. But then we have Mystique's. And the origin of the X-Men and the Brotherhood. And, least obvious, the origin of the hostility between humanity and mutants.

This did not look like a Magneto movie that was trying to be all those other things; it was a story that seamlessly told everything it needed to, while developing the major characters fully. Xavier's not overshadowed by either Magneto or the supposedly-Magneto-centric writing. Xavier may have not been the badass of the film, but he was very much the heart. He, nor Erik, were undercut by any means. It was a film that lived up to the two central characters of all X-Men mythos... not to mention everything else the story told. There was so much that was established in the film, yet it doesn't feel muddled or rushed. And on top of it, it had a great cast of side characters which served purposes and had their own hands in the plot. It's absolutely my favorite X-film yet.

I hope they don't bring the Hellfire club back - I find that lazy storytelling. It was implied heavily that Shaw headed the secret gang of no more than four (then five) mutants, especially when you see those same mutants reigning over the earth in Emma's mind. Shaw wasn't working for or under anyone else. Whether there's a possibility that there were other henchmen out there could be speculated (though I highly doubt,) but it's unlikely that, if so, once the heads of Hellfire died/broke-up, any possible others would reform the group. The Hellfire club's over. Magneto destroyed it and reincarnated it into what will be his Brotherhood.

Very well-said.

[The Original Bamfer]

Why, thank you!

[Schlosser85]

I don't think FC is a Magneto origin story either.

I mean, a major part of it is, and Erik has probably the most centric arc of anyone except maybe Mystique, but he is part of a whole.

In my review (shameless plug: http://www.jestersreviews.com/reviews/729) I mentioned how smoothly it handled all the balls it had to juggle.

Impressively, considering the large amount of ground and material it covers, the pace is remarkably smooth (the 131-minute running time passes quickly), and the multi-layered plot moves with assurance and energy. Vaughn is juggling a lot of balls, but he never feels like he’s in danger of losing control.

[C. Lee]

My wife and I watched this again this evening....we both think it is the best of the X-Men movies.

[Schlosser85]

I do too. I would rather watch and rewatch it than any other.

[The Original Bamfer]

Originally Posted by Schlosser85

I don't think FC is a Magneto origin story either.

I mean, a major part of it is, and Erik has probably the most centric arc of anyone except maybe Mystique, but he is part of a whole.

In my review (shameless plug: http://www.jestersreviews.com/reviews/729) I mentioned how smoothly it handled all the balls it had to juggle.

While the plug was relevant to your point (which I agree with and think is well-composed,) I should tell you not to plug your site too much. Boss man's not keen on outside advertisements... and you could say it's been a bit of a problem in the past particularly in this forum.

Originally Posted by C. Lee

My wife and I watched this again this evening....we both think it is the best of the X-Men movies.

The Lees have good taste!

[The Original Bamfer]

Originally Posted by Schlosser85

I do too. I would rather watch and rewatch it than any other.

Yep! I feel it's got the smarts and the heart (if not more) of X2 combined with the smooth pace and spectacular action of The Last Stand. Vaughn and Singer really need to make sure they keep what they've got going on, well, on.

[marvelrobbins]

Glad to see you have posted again.The X-Men boards lately have turned Into prasing
The Avengers and badmouthing the X-Men films.We laregly agree.I don't think first Class
was strickly Magneto's film and I doudt we see anymor eof hellfire club.

X2 remains my favorate X-Men film.I feel first Class Is better paced than the last stand.
But agree It has the last Stand's spectacular action.

[X-Maniac]

Originally Posted by marvelrobbins

Glad to see you have posted again.The X-Men boards lately have turned Into prasing
The Avengers and badmouthing the X-Men films.We laregly agree.I don't think first Class
was strickly Magneto's film and I doudt we see anymor eof hellfire club.

Not so much badmouthing as expressing frustrations.

I think there are valid points to be made - when comparing with Avengers - over

1) the sharing out of screentime (Avengers didn't have the Wolverine effect of dominating the film at the expense of others)
2) the creation of a cohesive world/franchise

With the Marvel films, you could watch one them one after the other fairly seamlessly.

Not so much with X-Men. The timeline and continuity is a mess. The studio's 'one film at a time' approach hasn't done much to build a single big-screen universe.

And a little more acknowledgement of the comics wouldn't hurt, to be honest. I wouldn't want characters forced in because they were in the comics at a set point, but disregarding the comics altogether doesn't exactly help - and it only alienates the fans and makes them spread bad buzz about the franchise online. It still baffles me why they chose a female character called Angel to be around at the start of the X-Men (and then become a baddie), when the comics have a male Angel in the first comics. Now, we all know we saw that male Angel in X3 (so he wouldn't be around during the 60s), but it seems odd to deliberately pick a female Angel for First Class. Was this a nod to the comics having a character called Angel in its own 'first class' or what?

Having said that, I think I prefer any of the X-Men films over any of the Marvel Studios films because there is more depth and story. But there is still work to be done on the points I have raised.

As for the Hellfire Club's reappearance, I was the one who mentioned it, for several reasons. Firstly, the Club as we saw it in First Class was never really explored or explained; secondly, it was not like the comics; and thirdly, it might provide a thread to weave through the franchise and give a sense of cohesion that is sorely lacking at the moment. But if they choose to leave the Hellfire Club alone now, then so be it.