My own self

Shirgaal writes: I will probably watch this when it comes out on DVD. Some friends of mine saw it and said it was pretty decent. But I rarely go to the cinema anymore, and I have never been into X-Men. I have to admit I am looking forward to seeing Michael Fassbender as Magneto.

I've never been into the X-men comics, but X2 is one of my favourite superhero movies of all time (second only to The Dark Knight), so I still have a strong sentimental interest in seeing this franchise revived in quality.

And Fassbender owns this movie, so you can look forward to that. Between him, Bacon and McAvoy, the movie has a really strong central set of actors out of which at least one shows up in nearly every scene, and that is definitely one of its major strengths.

Shirgaal writes: I only watched the first X-Man movie. Didn't like it, so I never watched the others. But I think I'm gonna have to give the second one a chance. Perhaps this weekend. First Class is definitely on my to-watch list when it comes ou on DVD.

I quite like the first one. It's not great, but it's not bad either. It has some quite excellent scenes and moments (the WW2 opening scene, every single scene with Magneto and Xavier sharing dialogue, etc), but it also has some lulls in the plot where it loses my engagement in what's going on.

Anyway, point is, if you don't think the first one is at least okay, you might not think much of the second one either (or First Class, for that matter). I, however, thought X2 fixed all the problems the first one had in that it engaged me throughout, and it had a virtual ton of the compelling moments and one-liners which were so much more rarely scattered throughout the first one.

Stay the hell away from X3 and Origins: Wolverine, though.

Shirgaal writes: Wow, is X3 really that bad compared to 1 and 2? I always hated the Wolverine character so I won't go near that one. Especially now.

X3 is really, really bad. Don't get me wrong, it still has some good scenes and even some good plotlines, but it drowns in its own scale. They have about 4 major plots in it where 2 or even 1 would have sufficed and as a result, none of the plots reach their potential even remotely. They try to keep around nearly every character from the earlier installments, and yet they introduce another 10-12 speaking parts. Now add the fact that a movie like this needs a lot of running time spent on action scenes and special effects... The movie thus ends up being rushed. No character, even the ones who get out of it relatively well (Kelsey Grammar is fantastic as Beast, for instance), gets the amount of attention they deserve, or even the amount necessary for the audience to properly bond to their stories. No plotline, as I said, gets to properly reach fruition, as they all drown each other out. X3 is not one but four movies of varying levels of quality all fighting for the same 2 hours of screen time, and it shows oh-so-clearly.

Now, a fanboy like me will still get a lot out of it - again, any Magneto/Xavier scene with McKellen and Stewart is worth whatever else nonsense is going on - but on a more objective scale, the movie is just plain bad.

Origins: Wolverine is critically even less well thought of than X3, but I have to say that personally between the two, I prefer it. At least it has a reasonable amount of characters in the cast, only a single plotline, and some compelling performances (notably Liev Schreiber as Sabretooth) to keep you interested whenever the quality might take a nosedive for a scene or five. But it can't hold a candle to X1, and X1 can't hold a candle to X2. First Class falls somewhere between X1 and X2 in quality, but in my opinion, closer to the latter than to the former.