Introduction:
This would be the third movie in the rebooted X-men series of movies. The third one that will star the younger Magneto, Xavier as well as all many other characters. For those who are confused, X-men actually has had about 6 main X-men movies before this one, a few origin stories (with few more going to come out in the near future).
The first few of these movies were the one that starred the old guard and the most famous of which was Hugh Jackman who would then, thru these movies, become synonymous with Wolverine. So in sort, things happened in the first few movies, and more or less everyone died. So in X-men First Class, the storyline creators used Hugh again, to go back into time and this resulted in the alteration of the future. Note that this alteration means that the story after X-men First Class can and is very different from what had happened in the previous timeline that Hugh Jackman acted in. Therefore, they are able to start the whole story from scratch and tell it whatever way they want again. Nothing is set in stone and they pretty much can do anything they want to the X-men cinematic franchise from this point onwards.
X-men movies focuses on team work and team dynamics. Other movies tend to focus on other aspects of their movie characters to make it have their individual draw to the audience. Movies like Hulk focuses on the internal conflict of the person, Thor focuses on the god aspect coming from another planet, Iron man focuses on technology while Captain america focuses on super soldier and leadership aspects of the superhero world and their interaction with shield. Avengers on the other hand actually appeals to the same audience as the X-men but the advantage they have is that all the characters back stories are already fleshed out by the preceding movies. Hence X-men movies have a tough internal competitor that they would be competing with. So how did this movie perform when we break it down?
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| All the mutants, good and bad... and the ambiguous |
Storyline 3/5
The story is quite standard, in fact, you it is kind of like pokemon whereby both sides, good and bad, spend some time going around the world getting their characters/heroes/mutants in the picture with Xavier on one side and Apocalypse on the other side. Then they just meet in the middle and start to duke it out.
You get to see many of the mutants with their various powers but all in all it is those mutants that we have already known for a long long time and as a result, the whole storyline is quite standard. There is no particular big twist and everything just progress "as expected"
The problem with the storyline is that the end is already more or less too obvious to be really exciting. Add to this that the movie focus is on storytelling of an already expected storyline, and the lack of action scenes, this movie is unable to really stand out far enough amongst the other movies out there.
Character 3.5/5
Character wise, I would say that we would already know most of their powers and there is nothing that will totally amaze the audience. Because they need to spend so much time recruiting new characters, all characters probably get only about 5 or 10 minutes of time as a introduction, and u see them again for another 5 minutes in their battle with each other and that is it. There is very little character building on both sides and the audience will not really feel for any of the characters at all.
That is really the problem with having too many characters in the movie, needing to introduce all of them, and yet trying to invest in the storyline all at one go. At the very least however, all the mutants are distinct and their powers are pretty varied so it is still exciting to the audience when you see them use their abilities. If only there were more screen time allocated to them using their power to the fullest potential though.
Cinematography 3/5
Sadly, this part got the movie down. For a movie that already has missed out a lot of opportunity for action portions, the further lack of using good action shots to entertain during the action portions itself made this movie quite ordinary. The only slightly good scene was the quicksilver scene but when it got to the main fight, it lost the steam a bit too quickly. Lots of lost opportunities there.
Music 3/5
Music was ordinary, I was not able to pick out the music being particularly beneficial to what was happening during the movie itself but at least it didn't harm the experience either.
Spectacle 3/5
Unfortunately, this was the main killer of the movie itself. Being a marvel film, everyone would already have a set expectation (which probably is gonna be quite high). On the storyline sense, unfortunately, this movie has the difficult job of setting the new stage right for the new X-men timeline but it was entirely, ordinary, collect your mutant style with too little twists. From the action aspect it also suffered greatly. Basically, every mutant is a 1 or 2 trick pony with just about 3 - 5 mins of them using their power in the entire movie. The ordinary cinematography also did the movie no favors and in the end, its the very much expected everyone just dump their power on the main bad guy and see him explode kind of movie. If it did not have any competition in the movie market, this may have been good enough, but in a world with avengers and DC comics coming up with their own movies, this movie did not really enthrall the viewer enough.
Overall
Storyline: 3 (Pretty obvious and uneventful storyline with too little twists to keep things interesting)
Character: 3.5 (Sure there are many mutants, and all their powers are distinct, but much opportunity was lost as they did not have the time to showcase their powers)
Cinematography: 3 (Lack of good shots for action scenes except that very one quicksilver scene)
Music: 3 (Ordinary music, did not harm but mostly did not support the movie either)
Spectacle: 3 (Unfortunately, they tried to focus on storyline which was overall too weak and obvious. Action wise, they did not manage to captialize. It wasn't bad, but neither was it any much more then average)
Overall: 3.1 (Well the score is quite telling of whether you should or should not see the movie. Basically, its a average movie, that you won't really call a total waste of your time, but there is no need to really make the time to see the movie if you don't have the spare time. Nothing much really happened this movie (you could just start the next movie with no impact from this movie) and the action did not really pull the audience in. The fact that people who already seen the other x-men movies would not really be impressed by this alternate retelling of the movie and the way the mutant powers are utilized as everything happens in a very ordinary, expected manner. You can go ahead and see it if you have the time, but if not, wait for the next one and DVD it if you needed to before the next movie.)
Well? What did you think of this movie? Did it hold a candle to the avengers series? Let me know in the comments!
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