Three things that suck about X-Men First Class (2011)

Prequel opportunity

Much like Marvel Comics themselves, the brains trust behind X-Men First Class wrongly assumed that there was more than a passing interest in looking backwards. While certainly the foundation for the series, Magneto and Professor X are probably the least interesting characters in the comics – more figureheads than action figures, and despite the producer’s best efforts, focussing on their budding bromance and eventual spat was hardly the same as watching Anakin Skywalker turn to the Dark Side of the Force. Readers have spent 35 years listening to their diametrically opposed visions for Mutantkind, and the film doesn’t explore that any more than the first three films already did. It was a lot like reading the original Stan Lee comics – clunky dialogue, cheesy powers, staggeringly oversimplified plot.

Causing Havok

Rather than actually revisiting the comics and its histories, the characters in the film are a lucky dip of the X-Leftovers, and almost exclusively taken out of context. It’s almost as if Marvel said to them ‘Hey, these are the 128 characters that were in the X-Men at one point or another – which ones do you want to play with?’ And with little regard to histories or popularity, the producers simply took a stab in the dark, and the result is uneven and messy. With the exception of Magneto and Mystique, not a single one of the characters in this film have ever had their own spin-off comic book series, which best demonstrates how little interest fans have in them.

Dud villains

The X-Men franchise seems to be the only one that rehashes its villain. Despite a plethora of super-cool bad-guys, all three of the first films showed the X-Men clashing with Magneto. X-Men First Class was given the prime opportunity to introduce another of the X-Men’s classic villains – Mr Sinister, Apocalypse, Sentinels, the Brood – but instead they cast a watered down version of the Hellfire Club to tackle Professor X’s watered down version of Hogwarts. The wimped out on a chance to create a new iconic cinematic villain, instead choosing to throw some work to an otherwise unemployable Kevin Bacon.