The kind people at VIVA organized a social media event in Kuwait and invited Khaleejesque to the premiere of the new X-Men movie at the 360 VIP cinema a day before its official release to the public. I went with a friend and enjoyed the delicious finger foods catered by Fauchon and afterwards had some frozen yogurt courtesy of Red Mango before the movie started. Many thanks to the VIVA team for hosting a well-organized and wonderful event. Now onto the movie review!
After the critically-panned X-Men: The Last Stand was released in 2006, Fox wanted to reinvent the X-Men franchise and start from the beginning by bringing in a new cast and telling a new story. Five years later, X-Men: First Class is finally released and it’s a prequel to the three previous X-Men films. The film is set in the 1960's and tells the story of a young mind reader Charles Xavier and his troubled friend Eric, who later on come to be known as Professor X and Magneto respectively. The story unfolds by showing the audience how they met and became friends by working together to organize fellow mutants and foil the plans of the Hellfire Club, an evil society of mutants led by Sebastian Shaw who is bent on dominating the world. Eventually their different viewpoints on how to co-exist and deal with humans lead them to becoming enemies.
If you are an X-Men geek like me you'll find it very cool to see their relationship develop and why they both ended up the way they were in the first X-Men film. It shows how Professor X eventually started the school for mutants and origins of the conflicts between mutants and humans. X-Men: First Class is directed by Matthew Vaughn (who directed Kick-Ass) and stars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Rose Byrne, January Jones and Kevin Bacon.
What is also cool are the surprise cameos by actors from the first films, I won’t say who exactly so that you'll be shocked like me! It was so much fun seeing them appear for a couple of seconds. Fox envisions X-Men: First Class as the first film of a new trilogy and when discussing the sequels the director mentioned that "First Class is similar to Batman Begins, where you have the fun of introducing the characters and getting to know them, but that takes time. But with the second one you can just get on with it and have a rollicking good time. That’s the main difference between Begins and The Dark Knight."
Overall, I really enjoyed the film and the action scenes were amazing! I would give it a 4 out of 5 and consider it to be on the same level as the first three X-Men movies. It was awesome seeing the new mutants and discovering what their super powers are but unfortunately the movie was heavily censored (by the Ministry), which was very annoying! You couldn’t fully enjoy the first half of the film from the scenes that were butchered and January Jones literally appears for around five minutes throughout the movie since most of her scenes were cut.
Verdict: 4 out of 5 stars
– Abdulla Al-Mulaifi
Images: IMDb.com
