Wil Wheaton and I got excited and made a thing! Check out our University of Gallifrey Fighting Time Lords Shirt over at Sharksplode.

I am closing out some current t-shirt and print designs. Please check out this blog post since the stuff on closeout probably won’t be available again.

Rejoice nerds. Our long national nightmare is over. X-Men: First Class has wiped clean the stains left on the X-Movie Franchise by X-Men 3: Frasier Beast and X-Men Original Recipe: Wolverine. It really is that good. Before I get to the good, I will quickly dispatch with the bad. As stated in the panels above, the films Americanizes ALL of the non-American characters from the comics. This seems like a very strange and totally unnecessary choice. The X-Men were always supposed to be an international collective, representative not of any one country, but of the world. It’s supposed to be mutants v. humans, not americans v. everyone else. Since the plot of the movie revolves around the cuban missile crisis, I wonder if they did this to place emphasis on the American/Russion conflict. This doesn’t ruin the movie, but it will leave longtime X-Fans confused. The other major gripe I have it will Emma Frost. The casting, the writing, and the characterization are just wrong. She comes off in the film as a tarty, sexy, fun-loving, bond girl. Where is the stone cold fake-British-accent-sporting bitch we all love to hate/love? [NOTE: I admit I am primarily familiar with the Emma from Astonishing X-Men and realize she might have been portrayed differently in the past or in other titles, perhaps without an accent at all.] January Jones (who until recently I assumed was Blake Lively), either can’t act or just doesn’t want to. Again, these are small gripes that only slightly detract from an otherwise fantastic movie.

Now for the good. The rest of it… is the good. Michael Fassbender as Magneto OWNS this movie. While I adored Ian McKellan’s portral of the master of magnetism, it was clear we were seeing a battle weary version of Magneto in his twilight years. He was more concerned with playing general to his various henchmen than getting into the thick of things himself. He was probably on a 2-3 bottles of Ensure a day habit and likely went to bed around 8pm, right after “The Wheel” went off. The Magneto we see in First Class is in his prime. He’s an assassin, a fucking unstoppable badass. And his friendship/idealogical struggle with Charles Xavier really balance out his all consuming need for revenge. Speaking of accents, Fassbender’s Irish accent pops out towards the end of the film during a few moments of impassioned speech.

• Why X-Men: First Class aims to be like a 1960s James Bond film
• X-Men: First Class: Not Your Same Old Mutant Angst
• What X-Men: First Class learned from X-Men: The Last Stand’s mistakes
• Check out this 90’s made-for-TV-Movie version of Generation X. It’s amazingly terrible.

There are parts of the film that feel like it should be called X-Position Men. Characters pick their codenames, give their backstories or drop an unusual amount of backstory in a very short of amount of time, but you can’t really fault them for trying to bring the average movie goer up to speed quickly in order to move the plot along. Some of it feels ham-fisted, like when Mystique says, “I want to be called Mystique and you should be Professor X!” But most of it goes over just fine. I also applaud the filmmakers for establishing quite clearly that the movie takes place in the 1960’s but somehow keeping everything mostly decade agnostic. It doesn’t feel like a period piece which keeps things more relatable. Final verdict: GO SEE IT. Fun times.

COMMENTERS: Did you see X-Men: First Class? What did you think? Do you hope they continue the franchise in this timeline?