I am not a comic book fan. It's one of those properties I'd probably enjoy, but I didn't grow up with them and there's no way I'll ever start. I have too many movies to watch, too much television, and too many books to read. Comic books are a distant thought to me. Comic book movies, on the other hand, I have seen. I'm tired of them, but I have seen more than a few of them. Of the X-Men franchise, the only movie I haven't seen is The Wolverine. (Apparently this movie contradicts that movie.)
I'm not sure I have many thoughts on this movie. I enjoyed it a lot. The special effects were breathtaking. The stakes were the end of the world, which is becoming increasingly common and thus increasingly dull. However, the movie made sure to keep the conflict personal. The time travel aspect, also weirdly an increasingly common trope to rejuvenate franchises, isn't too confusing. People who have a tendency to overthink time travel will probably find fault with it and I'm usually one of those people, but it never took me out of the movie while I was watching it.
I'm not sure how the X-Men comics are, but in the movies it's ultimately about the tragedy of Erik Lehnsherr and Charles Xavier's doomed friendship. And because the actors playing them have been Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan - and now James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender - it's nearly always effective. I particularly liked how in the present, you see Erik saying how he wished he could have had a few years back being enemies with Xavier while in the past, he's unwittingly creating the future that will doom him. That's the surprising part about this movie. Magneto is, at least in my opinion, the most sympathetic character and one who breaks your heart.
If I have a problem with the movie, it's probably with Jennifer Lawrence's Raven, or Mystique. Despite moving the plot of the movie along, I felt she was underserved as a character. I was less affected by her internal struggle than I should have been, because it mostly felt like it was just a plot machination to me. I can see a future where she goes on a rampage and wants to kill the people who want to see her dead, but I don't think this reboot version had gotten her to that point yet. As presented in First Class, that's Magneto's thing, not Mystique's yet. The movie skipped over the part where she makes the "heel turn" in my opinion. And then at the end she sort of out of nowhere becomes a good guy. It's not really out of nowhere, but I don't know I didn't think it would happen at that point.
I also thought the ending was a little too pat and probably makes this movie suffer at least a little bit on rewatch. So none of the somewhat shockingly painful deaths for all the mutants mattered. It never even technically happened. (Those deaths.... damn is all I can say. Apparently saying fuck is more harmful than watching that.)
3/4 stars
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