I’ve watched the whole X-Men franchise of movies and have to say that it’s not bad. In fact, much like “Terminator: Salvation” and the “Star Wars” pantheon, I’m always impressed when writers/creators are able to “reach back” in a prequel and make it maintain its sense of identity within the existing universe that’s already been created. The last Terminator did this brilliantly, in my estimation, given that it plays with time-travel and we’ve already had glimpses of that future in the previous movies… (I’m gonna stop here because further writing will only make my brain hurt).
Anyway, the movie is not all blow-’em-up, Michael Bay action sequences from start to finish and might even be considered a little slow in the beginning. Any fan of the X-Men storylines will enjoy, however, learning how Magneto comes to hate ordinary humans (being in a concentration camp headed by Kevin Bacon might do that to you), how Mystique (played by the comely Jennifer Lawrence, a worthy ‘young’ version of Rebecca Romijn – who first plays the older Mystique in the original X-Men movies) comes to be Magneto’s love interest, how Beast winds up being blue and furry, and ultimately how Charles Xavier winds up in a wheelchair, with his pupils named “X-Men.”
All-in-all, it’s a pretty quick 2 hours and 11 minutes, once you fast-forward to 1962 and see the X-Men right in the middle of the Cuban Missile crisis, trying to prevent Kevin Bacon from destroying the world. As a brief aside, Kevin Bacon’s ubiquitous acting career has generally seen him as a “good guy,” (Footloose, She’s Having a Baby, Flatliners, Murder in the First, Taking Chance, even A Few Good Men) but I gotta say that I think his best work is as an evil SOB. There’s something menacing about his smile, with those light blue eyes. You think I’m kidding? Check him out in Sleepers, in which he plays a sadistic guard, who is physically and sexually abusing young boys at a correctional facility; or watch him in A River Wild, with Meryl Streep; and finally, he’s a pretty good kidnapper/psycho in Trapped, with Charlize Theron as his victim.
It’s always nice to see a really bad guy get his comeuppance – and what could be more “bad” than a Nazi doctor with X-type powers who murders a young Jewish boy’s mother in front of him in order to bring out/develop that boy’s powers. Bacon dies a pretty frigging awful death at the hands of Eric Fassbender’s wonderfully portrayed Magneto. The phrase “…and keep the change” comes to mind. Or “blood money.” (If you haven’t seen the movie, this won’t be remotely funny, and if you have, it will probably only be mildly funny.)
In sum, this wasn’t Schindler’s List by any stretch, but you don’t come away from it feeling like you got screwed out of your $9. And if you’re a fan of the themes and X-Men, you’ll appreciate the gestures to the franchise – Hugh Jackman’s “Wolverine” telling Xavier and Magneto “Go fuck yourself” before they can utter a word is a nice, if perhaps unnecessary, touch. I’ll give it 3.5 stars out of 5, as if my vote matters, for entertainment value. Movies are meant to entertain and there’s enough thematic work that sets up the later (already made) movies that it’s a very well-conceived prequel… oh, yeah, and January Jones (of Mad Men, which I still haven’t seen) is hotter than hell as Bacon’s sex-kitten telepath. Mrrowww.