Theater Whore: X-Men Origins

I tried for a bit to not see this movie. Had no desire to since just from the trailer I didn’t know if this was part of the previous X-Men films or not. Even after seeing the film I’m still not exactly sure. But what I am sure about is that Magneto is one of the most bad ass characters to ever exist and if you don’t believe it, here’s a coin for you! 

The film starts with a flashback of a young Magneto being separated from his family during the Holocaust. Later he is held captive by Kevin Bacon (Every Movie Ever) as Sebastian Shaw. He wants to have young Erik Lehnsherr move a Nazi coin to show his powers. Erik tries and cant. They bring his mom in and Shaw tells him to move the coin in three seconds or his mom gets pumped full of lead. Erik still cant so, bye-bye, mommy! Erik loses his shit and everything metal gets crunched and he kills two guards in the process. 

There are two stories that are happening at the same time. A young Charles Xavier comes downstairs and finds his mother home. After reading her mind (because that’s what young Chuck does) he discovers that its actually Raven, a shape shifting mutant. “Hey, you can eat anything you want and stay here!” he tells her. So that happens.

As an adult Erik played by Michael Fassbender (Inglorious Basterds, 300, Jonah Hex) is hunting down Nazi’s and killing the shit out of them! Charles Xavier played by James McAvoy (Wanted, Atonement, The Last King Of Scotland) is now a professor and still running around withMystique played by Jennifer Lawrence (Winter’s Bone, The Beaver) who wants to look normal.

The movie gets very, very convoluted at this point. Sebastian Shaw wants Russia and America to blow each other to hell so he and his mutants can take over. Magneto wants to kill folks. Xavier is recruiting a team of untrained children to save the world. There are a lot of cameos by characters from comics like Darwin, Banshee (no accent), Moira Mactaggert (no accent), Angel (not Archangel/Angel) and Emma Frost played by January Jones (Unknown,The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, Pirate Radio). Does she kick ass? No, not really. Plus she is too damn thin. Emma Frost supposed to be smoking hot! January Jones isn’t to me.

I have been hearing people praise this movie as good as if not better than the Christopher Nolan Batman films, which is total nonsense. You know what’s good? Whenever Magneto is on the screen. Michael Fassbender is amazing as Magneto and owns that role much in the same way that Liev Schreiber did with his role as Sabretooth in Wolverine: Origins. 

The entire finding of children and training them could have been left out. I’m still not sure if this is connected to the new films or not which was not helped by a surprise appearance by Wolverine. Stop fucking with my head! This is what it must feel like to be Logan. I half liked this movie a lot and half thought it was full of nonsense, bad music, and bad pacing. I don’t give scales of 1 through 10 on here or stars. But there’s no rush to really rush out and see this unless you have nothing else to watch…which means you should see it because there ain’t shit else to see in theaters right now!