Cinematic Smackdown: X-Men: First Class & Your Highness

If you know me, you know I know movies. I used to watch at least one per day; and while that pace has slowed over the years, I still see quite a few. I can assure you there will be many, many movie-centric posts and references in this blog. That said, generally I would prefer one movie per post so as to dedicate an appropriate amount of discussion, but I'm cheating a bit here for the sake of convenience. Sue me.

X-Men: First Class - 2.5/5
dir. Matthew Vaughn
Matthew Vaughn (Layer Cake) redeems himself a bit from the overstylized, carnographic mess of Kick-Ass and proves that while he may be a competent director of big-budget action and effects, he is still not a very good storyteller. As such, X-Men: First Class is a mixed bag: strong performances overall with a few good action scenes, but underneath lie structural problems in the script and far too much "busy-ness" in the plot. This latest installment then is most appropriately ranked ahead of the disastrous X-Men: Last Stand but behind both X-Men and the vastly superior X2: X-Men United.

Breaking a bit from tradition, this film follows a series of mostly unknown mutants throughout their burgeoning discovery of not only their own abilities, but their comforting acceptance among other mutants, and perhaps even among the rest of humanity. While we meet the likes of Banshee, Havok, Darwin, and others, however, the film is still centered mostly around the budding friendship and subsequent falling out of Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr. This is the core of the film, and thankfully these are the scenes which work best.

Actors James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender do a very nice job of not only inhabiting such well-known comic creations but making them their own. While Patrick Stewart is perhaps the perfect choice for Professor X as we know him, McAvoy brings a cockiness and arrogance to the younger version of the character which adds some nice dimension. Xavier may be brilliant, but he also will manipulate if he believes it to be for the greater good (which, in the early scenes of the film, means scoring with girls in a bar). Fassbender's Magneto is a little less well-developed. The Holocaust backstory is still there (the character introduction is basically shot for shot from the first X-Men), but whereas his goals were much grander and more complex in the earlier films, here they are much more straightforward: simply, vengeance. Vengeance for what? For the murder of his mother by a sociopathic "doctor" from that most storied of cinematic villains - the Nazis. Played with appropriate campiness by Kevin Bacon, Sebastian Shaw is charming but simplistic: he likes mutants, but wants to kill everyone else... and he'll kill mutants, too, if they get in his way.

So those are the basic motivations, and these characters are really the best part of an otherwise mediocre film. What struck me again and again during the movie is just how "busy" it is. This is already a prequel which takes place decades before the other three films, full of flashbacks to the principals' childhoods. Then we have romances, love triangles, political machinations of a seedy nature, all with about four A-story elements, a handful of B elements, and then countless Cs and Ds. Oh, and there's the Cuban missile crisis. Just too much.

The other films were big and convoluted, too (something like this has to be, considering how many characters there are in the X-Men universe), but comparing the previous three to this current one easily reveals the strengths and weaknesses of all four, and that is perhaps why I gave the film the rating I did. Not that 2.5 is all that bad, but I was perfectly fine with the film. It told the story adequately, gave some nice shading and dimension to characters already present in the first three films, and was generally well-made... I just kept thinking of X2, though, which is still by far the best of the series. Even X-Men is much better than this film, and I thought that one was a little lacking.

What it boils down to, basically, is that Bryan Singer is a better director than Matthew Vaughn. Singer can juggle all of these storylines, direct exciting action, and hint at drama, whereas Vaughn spells it out all too clearly. Take Magneto's backstory. A good deal of this movie is spent either in concentration camps or following Fassbender enact his revenge; in X-Men, there was one scene at the beginning and then one glance down at the numbers on Magneto's arm - far more effective. Overall, X-Men: First Class is a decent distraction if you're struggling for something to watch, but even in the ballooning realm of comic book movies, it falls toward the middle of the pack.


Your Highness - 1/5
(dir. David Gordon Green)
Oh my God - David Gordon Green, what happened? You emerged as one of the most promising young filmmakers of your generation, and in the span of only a few films, you've thrown it all away. Gone is the ambitious, brilliant young filmmaker of the likes of George Washington, or All the Real Girls, even Undertow, which I felt was a little too pretentious and plodding... you know, I was confused when this great director of high drama was revealed to be the one behind Pineapple Express, but I went with it. Good for him, I thought, he's trying something new and expanding his horizons. Despite some brilliant lead performances, though, that film was unfortunately a little too padded with dull bits that added too little to the "story," as it were, and just plain weren't that amusing. This time around, after witnessing this disaster of a movie, Green might want to consider changing his name. Sincerely, there is not one funny joke in this movie: it is nothing more than a string of bland, ill-informed humor.

Here's the premise of virtually every joke: Danny McBride, dressed in medieval garb, speaks colloquially, usually throwing in toilet humor and vulgarity for no real reason. That's it. Seriously. How a crew as talented as this could find this amusing enough to spend months fretting over things like costumes or sets is beyond me. The script isn't even worth the paper is was printed on.

Even James Franco, who gave perhaps one of the greatest comedic performances ever in Pineapple Express, can't save this thing. He follows McBride's lead, though with less vulgarity. It seems that all of these talented people were somehow duped by Danny McBride's sense of humor, but the man is just not that funny. Even in a supporting role he's not that funny, so to give him a leading role, and a leading role in a medieval/fantasy film no less, is just a disaster.

Natalie Portman thankfully adds a little freshness as the spirited warrior who does her part to reveal what idiots these men are, but she's delegated to little more than eye candy.

If you were expecting something along the lines of Pineapple Express, just do yourself a favor and rewatch Pineapple Express. There's nothing here worthwhile.