X-Men: First Class

Synopsis:
Meet Professor Xavier and Magneto when they were wee lads.

Favorite one-line review from a different critic:
“Instead of being all about people discovering or earning their new powers, X-Men: First Class is all about the relationships. And it is a much better movie for it.” – Tim Martain -

My Review:
We all wanted to like the X-Men movies.  It was supposed to be the movie franchise that quenched the insatiable thirst of fan boys everywhere.  But the X-Men movies were mediocre at best.  But we wanted them to be good so we lied to ourselves and told ourselves they were better than they actually were.  Well, now we no longer have to lie to ourselves, because this X-Men movie captures the story, excitement and kick-ass'd-ness that we were hungry for.

We know it's going to be a great movie based on two things we see in the first 10 minutes.  A darker theme and Kevin Bacon.  You know how Ben Affleck ruins every movie he's in?  Kevin Bacon does the opposite.  No one would even know what "Wild Things" was if Bacon wasn't in the flick.  It's not like Nev Campbell had the big name star power to draw the audiences.  Also "Stir of Echoes", need I say more?

Back to the movie at hand, this X-Men is darker, has a great story and ties into the other movie like a shoe lace.  The Cuban missile crisis is also an unlikely but great backdrop for the story.  The only compliant I have is that they killed Darwin too fast.  I would love to see an origin movie for him (even if it is straight to DVD).

Rating:
8 out of 10

Suck Scale:
You know how X-Men 3 sucked.  Well, this doesn't.