And here we are; X-Men: First Class has been unleashed upon the world and thusly X-Men [Indeterminate Amount of Time] draws to a close.
Pre-production, or at least discussion for pre-production, for this film began before X-Men: The Last Stand had even come out. There was talk about where the franchise would go after the inevitable wave of immense critical acclaim and Oscar nominations for the obviously brilliant forthcoming third film. Spin-offs seemed to be the word of the day as movies starring Magneto, Wolverine and others were pitched but one idea that ended up getting past the drawing board stage was a prequel to the films starring a younger Charles Xavier and a younger team of X-Men. After the success of the first spin-off, X-Men Origins: Wolverine (Not critical success, mind you) 20th Century Fox green-lit the prequel and whole elements of the Magneto film ended up being merged with it (Supposedly, possibly not).
At an early stage in production Bryan Singer had returned to the franchise he had previously abandoned to blunder tackle Superman Returns. He appeared all set to direct this new film but once more bowed out to work on another movie instead (Jack the Giant Killer, whose production interfered with his involvement with this one). This time however Singer stayed on as a producer. Instead Matthew Vaughn, who himself once walked out on directing X-Men 3, came onboard to helm the film riding the wave of success from Kick-Ass. It’s somewhat fitting that he gets the chance to prove that he indeed had the tools to make a decent X-Men film.
Now that’s we’ve looked the three original X-Men movies we’re primed to compare this new entry to its predecessors. Seeing as the last two films were goddamned awful my hopes are not high.
Full review after the jump.
[WARNING: There are some minor spoilers. Not too bad, but they’re there so watch out]
