X-Men: First Class...

I loved this movie. I watched it smiling. I loved it on more counts than I can name. I loved the way it was true to the X-Men story, and yet didn't repeat stories I'd already seen, and provided a number of interesting characters. It relied more on character and story than special effects, and yet I liked the special effects as well.

It wasn't perfect. In fact, there wasn't a character in it that I thought was well cast in terms of looks, except maybe Moira McTaggart. And there was probably no one in it that I found attractive - except Hugh Jackman and Rebecca Stamos, in their so-brief appearances. It was cast with an aesthetic eye totally contrary to mind, but I don't think they should have case for looks. No, they cast for acting skill, and they got it. Jennifer Lawrence doesn't compare to the gorgeous Rebecca Romijn Stamos, but that really didn't matter - and made that wonderful visual joke with the more mature-seeming Mystique possible. I don't want another depiction like Halle Berry as Storm, who was beautiful to look at but as bland as a buttercup in the role.

I had been careful to avoid spoilers beforehand, and I had naively thought the story would be set around the events of X-Men #1, around the time when Scott Summers, Jean Grey, and Warren Worthington became X-Men. Nope! That ground has been covered often enough in the comics, and here we get a time before that... before there even was a school. Of course timeframe in the Marvel universe is always vague, but I was trying to guess - at least to my mind - how many years before X-Men #1 this story was set. Five years? Could be less, could be more, depending how you interpret the chronology.

( The best moment... )

Now I want to sit and read X-Men comics all night.