After the Campaign: X-Men: First Class

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In my campaign review for X-Men: First Class (over four years ago) I wrote:

As for my question of whether or not it’s entertaining enough for me to overcome my continuity issues, it’s not quite successful on that front but I don’t know that it ever could have been. I’m always going to have problems with the fact that this version of Emma Frost contradicts the Wolverine solo movie’s and that we never get that Mystique was originally trained by Xavier. But those are my problems to bare and the campaign does make the movie look very attractive (again outside of the posters) in its own right.

So yeah, I finally saw the movie a couple days ago and I have to say: It’s so fun I didn’t really care about the continuity issues. That may be partly because I know Days of Future Past (which I also haven’t seen) cleans some of those up but even so, First Class clips along with a charm and bounce that I completely bought into. McAvoy and Fassbender in particular play incredibly well off each other and provide the vast majority of that bounce and charm and, of course, provide much of the forward momentum of the story.

There are certainly issues with the film, some of which are hinted at in the campaign. None of the secondary villains are fully developed to the point where we feel like they’re any actual threat; They’re just a stick figure for some sort of power. Even Kevin Bacon’s Sebastian Shaw is an inked sketch, with all kinds of evil machinations in play (I said while watching it “So Sebastian Shaw orchestrated the Cuban Missile Crisis. I did not know that.”) but no explanation as to his motivations. I’m writing many of these issues off to the rushed production schedule, but measuring on that curve it’s actually remarkably well put together.

So as a whole I feel like the campaign somewhat mis-sold the movie as being a bit more serious than it really is, but that’s not hugely detrimental. I wish, though, more of that had been played up in the trailers and other materials. Yes, it’s full of character and timeline issues that don’t jive with the first three X-Men movies or Wolverine’s first solo film. But it’s so much fun that even as I cared about all that I didn’t really care about all that.

By Chris Thilk

Chris Thilk is a freelance writer and content strategist with over 15 years of experience in online strategy and content marketing. He lives in the Chicago suburbs.