THE DARK KNIGHT RISES: What I liked

Following on from my previous post on The Dark Knight Rises (and a lengthy facebook discussion), I realised I left out a few things I liked or enjoyed about Nolan's trilogy capping film. I have a tendency to do this I think; to become too critical and focus on what doesn't work with something. So, I wanted to offer, not a counterpoint, but a balancing post.

Needless to say, this will be getting spoilery too. 

So, here's some things I enjoyed in the film:

• Anne Hathaway's Selina Kyle. While never directly named Catwoman in the film, we all know who she is. And Hathaway was a marvel in the role. She alternated between fierce and a fake vulnerability with ease. She was sexy while never being just a sexual object. 

• Joseph Gordon-Levitt's good, honest Officer Blake. He projects so much, with so little movement. While he nor Hathaway reach the incendiary highs of Ledger's Joker they are the shining, stand-outs this go around. 

• Michael Caine's Alfred is still the heart and cockney soul of the films. 

• Cillian Murphy's Scarecrow/Jonathan Crane popping back up. I really love that he's made it through all three films. Surely the only villain to do so in consecutive comic-book films?

• That, despite the themes not entirely gelling together or engaging, the fact that Nolan & Co. once again reached for something more than a man running around punching things in a rubber suit. 

• That, intentional or not, the final bit in the final action scene with Batman towing the bomb around Gotham reminded me of this: 

Film review: THE DARK KNIGHT RISES

Designed by Ben Whitesell

Well, it's over. The final film in Christopher Nolan's Bat-trilogy is here, wrapping it all up. Sort of.

Two warnings before you read any further: I'm gonna get all SPOILERY up in here and this is less a "review" and more a grab-bag of thoughts on the film and trilogy as a whole.

And one final thought before I get further into the "review" or whatever I'm going to call it of the film itself. As we are all aware, someone made the horrific decision to fire upon and kill 14 people at a midnight showing of Rises in Aurora, Colorado. I'm going to try and keep my own thoughts and opinions about this frightening incident out of this post, as I frankly don't think this is the proper forum for me to be talking about it and I don't know that I'm even qualified to offer an opinion past the obvious horror and sadness. Honestly, what can I even offer that a multitude of other, better, writers haven't already? Instead this post will be solely focussed on the film itself and my thoughts on same.

With that said, on with the grab-bag.

The reason for it being more a grab-bag, more a series of impressions and thoughts than a well-rounded review? Well, to be honest, I'm still trying to figure out exactly what I thought of the film. I came out of the two-and-a-half plus hours with a shrug of the shoulders and a vague feeling of "that's it?"

Let's get all the plot guff out of the way first shall we? 8 years on from The Dark Knight, Bruce Wayne is a hobbling recluse and the Batman has disappeared. However, ol' Brucie ventures out of the mansion when a slinky, seductive cat-burglar by the name of Selina Kyle swipes his mother's pearls. And just as Bruce is coming out of his self-imposed exile, a new villain arrives on the Gotham scene: Tom Hardy's massive and masked Bane. He's in town to follow through on Liam Neeson's plot to destroy Gotham from Batman Begins, with an overly complicated plot designed to net him a fusion-powered nuclear reactor or something. Which, after breaking Batman and tossing him down a hole, he sets on the looooongest countdown in history. Seriously, the bomb has a 5 month countdown. Why? Who the hell knows?

That 5 month countdown is really just a convenient plot device to allow Batman time to heal. Bane makes some mention of the wait being to allow the citizens of Gotham to hope for a saviour but... you never see a regular Gothamite or their reaction and the intangible idea of hope never coalesces in any meaningful fashion.

With Nolan's previous Bat-films, he has used them to explore or, at the very least, raise interesting themes and ideas and explored them through the Bat-villains. With Begins it was Fear tying into the Scarecrow and, on a larger scale, the League of Shadows and Batman himself. With Dark Knight it was Anarchy and Chaos, embodied in Heath Ledger's ghoulish Joker, as a directly opposing force to Batman's Order. With Rises... I hesitate to call it thematically inconsistent, as Nolan doesn't seem to really be truly engaging with any themes here. There are a number of possible avenues opened up (Hope? Evil?) but none that are fully explored. There are dalliances with popular uprisings and a tip-toe into the waters of the financial crises but the scatter-gun approach leads to the film feeling muddled on a fundamental level. What is it, exactly, that Bane represents? Whatever it may or may not be, it's completely undercut by the completely unnecessary and obvious twist reveal before the end. And once his usefulness to the plot is done with, he is summarily dispatched. Almost offhandedly.

Something I'm still processing, as a comic-book reader more than anything, is that this may not be Batman as we know him but it is unequivocally Nolan's Batman. The Batman I, and many other comic-book fans, know would not have quit after the events of The Dark Knight. In fact, the end of that film seemed to give Batman more impetus to continue his mission.

Which brings me to another point. Every other death in the trilogy has meant something; has resonated somehow. Whether it be Ra's al Ghul/Ducard in Begins or Rachel Dawes and Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight. In Dark Knight Rises, they just... happen. They don't tie in to the life of Bruce Wayne/Batman or the larger thematic concerns that Nolan may (or may not) be exploring.

Is Batman a conservative hero? What, if anything, is Nolan saying about the Occupy movement? Should Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Officer Blake have taken up the mantle of the Bat earlier in the film? Can anyone but Bruce Wayne be Batman? Where did Bruce Wayne's secret stash of inheritance money come from? Why did he have a bum leg if he quit crime-fighting? There's more to consider with The Dark Knight Rises but, for now, these are my thoughts.  

Also, Liam Neeson's ghost dissolve?! Really?! And "Robin"? C'mon. It's just so... off. 

Movie review: THE AVENGERS

Black Widow, by Olly Moss for Mondo

Before I get to my actual review of The Avengers I'm just going to talk a little bit about comic-book/superhero movies in general and my reaction to some of them and the increasing trend of them. And, let's face it, The Avengers is something of a turning point for this recently popular sub-genre.

I'm old enough that I remember the early days of this recent trend: I remember hearing about the Wesley Snipes starring Blade (I was too young then to get in to see the R-rated slashenings) and the storied rumours of an upcoming X-Men film (my favourite comic-book characters). I remember watching the TV movie of Generation X with my mates, so starved of comic-booky movies were we. A Spider-Man movie looked to be an impossibility, with the character's rights tied up in weird legal legally things. Superman hadn't been around for awhile (not since he Quested for Peace and fought on the moon). Batman had recently shat the bed. And Judge Dredd had taken a steaming shit on the multiplex.

But after X-Men hit in 2000 things started to improve for the frustrated comic-book/movie geek. Then Spider-Man swung in in 2002 and got the mainstream geeking out about people in tights. Thwip! KA-BOOM! The floodgates opened: Hellboy, more X-Men, the return of Superman, more Spider-Man, Batman got real, Fantastic Four, Hulk got art-housed, Daredevil, Constantine, more Blade, people even watched the Watchmen and the X-Men went back to class. Indie, non-superhero comics like Ghost World and American Splendour even got a look in. And the superhero genre itself has been skewered with the likes of Kick-Ass and (the not based on a comic-book) Super.

And so, late last decade, Marvel Comics decided to stop shilling its characters out to other studios and instead began developing their own movies based on their large library of characters. Thus, in 2008, Iron Man was released and the first step on the road to The Avengers was taken. Since then Hulk became Incredible, Iron Man got a sequel and two characters who I felt sure would never grace the silver screen got fairly great movies: Thor and Captain America.

So within that context, you can see how The Avengers is a culmination of not just these characters and four years of Marvel Studios films but something that has been building for a decade now. The Avengers is the first spin-in film; the first film to have characters from their own starring films appear in the same film together and facing a threat no single one of them could defeat on their own. The Avengers is, to paraphrase Ron Burgundy, kind of a big deal.

There is so much that could have gone wrong with this film; I'd be lying if I wasn't just a little worried going in. Not only did the threat have to be big enough to pull all of these characters together - a super soldier, a high-tech man-as-weapon, a god, a monster and two highly-trained black-ops spies - but there was a balance that needed to be struck between all of these disparate characters. Not only did they all have to have their own storylines and moments to shine but the chemistry between them had to be right, had to work seamlessly.

The good news is: it works. It all, amazingly, works. The Avengers is big, bold, confident, emotional and a very real, very large achievement and turning point. Frankly, given the history of similarly packed superhero films The Avengers has absolutely no right working as well as it does. Those worries that the chemistry and characters could be the biggest weaknesses are instead film's greatest strengths. And no small thanks should be given to writer/director Joss Whedon for this. A favourite among the geek community, his only other feature film directorial credit was for Serenity, the continuation of his much admired but cancelled TV show Firefly. In hindsight, Serenity was a near perfect training-ground for The Avengers: peopled with characters who already have an established history but not one that is known by everyone in the movie-going public they all have to be introduced, have their own arcs and times to shine. 

The various members of the team, far from being one-note and voiceless, are instead given moments upon moments that distil their essence. Chris Evans' Captain America remains my favourite Avenger - he's such an unpretentious, aw-shucks kind of good guy you cannot help but like him. But characters like Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow are really given time to shine here: in between the explosions and martial artistry she's given a real characters storyline and we're given more of an insight into who she is and what drives her. Mark Ruffalo subbing in for Edward Norton as Dr. Bruce Banner/the Hulk brings a completely different energy to the role, and I have trouble seeing how Norton's intelligent intensity would have worked with the dynamic. And when Ruffalo becomes the Hulk, it's a Hulk we haven't really seen before and he is absolutely one of the (many) highlights. Robert Downey Jr's Iron Man was the character I was most worried about: I feared him dominating proceedings due to the outstanding success of the previous Iron Man films and the upswing Downey Jr's career is currently on. But Whedon's smarter than that. Sure, Downey Jr likely gets the lion's share of the cracking one-liners but he doesn't come to overly dominate proceedings.

Tom Hiddleston's Loki (along with Hugo Weaving's brilliantly demented Red Skull) has been one of the great comic-book movie villains and here he is even wilder, crazier and vengeance-driven than in Thor. Hiddleston continues to impress as the emotionally volatile god of mischief and the relationship and interplay between him and his brother, Chris Hemsworth's Thor, is one of the stronger in a film of strong relationships. Hemsworth's Thor is still a delight to watch. Thor is such an out-there character, a god bestriding the world of mortals, but Hemsworth continues to play the human in the divine. And the more human characters, Samuel L. Jackson's Nick Fury and Clark Gregg's Agent Coulson, are also given their time in the spotlight. Jackson's Fury really gets a bump up here and Coulson, a surprising common thread through most of the separate films, really comes into his own in The Avengers. The only major character to really get short-shrifted is Jeremy Renner's Hawkeye; but even then he has his own very definite arc within the film.

Surprising me, in the most delightful way, is how downright hilarious the film is. It never veers into mocking or camp territory; Whedon and co-plotter Zak Penn are too respectful for that. Instead, it is dialogue and moments of humour that are used to illustrate character and punctuate tension. There are laughs, with nary a one not landing, throughout: from these larger-than-life characters arguing on the Helicarrier to the big-time balls out finale.

And that final battle that rages across New York City is a wonderful piece of action/comic-book filmmaking. Not only is it a visual spectacle, but the outcome actually matters because the character's care and matter. Coming into the film, this was one of my biggest worries. Whedon, as a director of big-time cinema action, is relatively untested. But, boy howdy, he and his crew really get into it with confidence and an amazingly sure hand.

The Avengers is, in many ways, the ultimate distillation of a comic-book movie. While Nolan has been stripping Batman down to a more "realistic" level, Whedon fully embraces the world of the comic-book. He is a man who knows his genre and has no qualms opening himself up to the craziness of it all: just like in the best team-up comic-books, the heroes come to blows with one another; there is crazy sci-fi tech (the SHIELD helicarrier) and aliens, gods and super-heroes fit side-by-side effortlessly. Whedon has an incredible amount of fun with that world and these characters and I had a big-ass grin on my face almost the entire way through. 

If I was to review The Avengers completely dispassionately it was probably not the best idea to see it at a midnight showing, with 700-odd other amped-up geeks. But as a fan, this is exactly how I wanted to see The Avengers and it was the most wonderful, pure and entertaining piece of superhero cinema yet. We were all whooping, laughing and cheering as one; every single person in that cinema had the time of their lives. I, unashamedly, unreservedly and geekily, loved the hell out of The Avengers.

I almost still can't quite believe it, but The Avengers have assembled. And they're phenomenal. 

THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN

Like a lot of people (including producer Peter Jackson), I enjoyed the adventures of Herge's coiffed boy reporter when I was young. Heck, my Dad enjoyed Tintin books when he was a kid; Tintin is a character who has been around world literature for some time with any number of kids growing up with him. I can still remember the first adventure I ever read - Tintin in America - and still have a firm favourite in the two-part Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon (somewhat betraying my early interest in sci-fi). So the Peter Jackson produced, Steven Spielberg directed, performance-captured Adventures of Tintin had my interest piqued.

It is an interesting choice Jackson and Spielberg made, going down the route of performance capture. They wanted to capture the distinctive look of Herge's characters and world but with a more realistic look; an exaggerated realism if you will. This of course meant that they could then cast pretty much whoever they wanted. Nevertheless Jamie Bell as the eponymous hero and Andy Serkis as the irrepressible drunk Captain Archibald Haddock are spot-on.

Opening with a fun credit sequence filled with the sorts of adventures typical of Tintin and reminiscent of his Saul Bass inspired Catch Me if You Can, Spielberg then takes us into the world of the film via a rather neat cameo. It's not long at all before the boy reporter finds himself in a whole mess of trouble - at the market he finds a rather stunning model ship which he purchases just before two other gentlemen show an interest. One is a little more forceful - the devious Sakharine (Daniel Craig). This model ship leads Tintin and his faithful terrier Snowy on a globe-trotting adventure with mutineers, a water-plane, kidnappers, a desert, pirates, the bumbling detectives Thomson & Thompson (Simon Pegg & Nick Frost) and a drunken no-hoper ship's Captain by the name of Haddock.

The script by Brit geek-geniuses Stephen Moffat and Edgar Wright & Joe Cornish is a propulsive ride, taking Tintin & Snowy (and, later, Haddock) from encounter to encounter with barely a moment to catch your breath. Those three writers are a trifecta of perfection, in terms of genre filmmaking and writing; Moffat's run on Dr. Who has been universally acclaimed as he balances single episodes with a larger mythology and Wright & Cornish have, between them, made four modern classics, each film fully aware and playing to it's genre. Spielberg makes the script dance and Tintin, Snowy and the audience are all quickly caught up in this adventure; this quest for the secret of the unicorn.

And I think there's a distinction that has to be made here - between action and adventure. The Adventures of Tintin is sure filled with its fair share of action but it is primarily an adventure film. A film about adventure, directed and produced by two of the greatest purveyors of modern-day adventure cinema. Spielberg, when firing on all cylinders as he is here, can craft an action sequence like few others, knowing exactly when to bring them in and how to play the audience through them. He melds that with Herge's world and sense of humour, as filtered through Moffat, Wright & Cornish, to create a number of stand-out gags throughout. There's Tintin attempting to grab a set of keys from a room full of sleeping thugs - one who is notably missing his eyelids altogether; there's Snowy leaping in and out of the background and foreground, going after sandwiches and seeing off big dogs; there's Captain Haddock misfiring a bazooka, shouting in splenetic fury and drinking every drop of alcohol he can get his hands on.

Andy Serkis once again proves himself to be the pre-eminent performance capture artist working today; his Haddock is the life and soul of the film. Where Bell's Tintin is intentionally left as something of a blank, Serkis' Haddock is a rough, world-worn and soulful character. And a lot of that is thanks simply to the performance of Serkis. You can add Haddock to the growing list of timeless characters Serkis has brought to life. The criticism I have with regards to the performance capture animation may just be me but I occasionally felt like the characters were lacking in weight. Some of their movements struck me as 'off' and unnatural; understand that none of this is poor work or a large distraction. Indeed, I have some trouble really putting my finger on what I felt to be 'wrong' here - is it just because I knew it was performance capture? Or were there really some moments that were not quite right? However, the entirely digital creation of Snowy is a wonder, helping to bring mischief and care to the adventure and he always feels entirely real.

Spielberg (with the more than capable assistance of the lads and lasses out at WETA) swings his camera wherever he damn well pleases. While this is another aspect of performance capture filmmaking I am on the fence about; where a swooping camera is allowed to go anywhere within a scene that can do anything with characters able to achieve impossible physicality, this is Spielberg and he is working with one of the most adventurous characters in literature. The Beard is a director who knows precisely where the camera needs to go and how to use the effect of 3D. I'm not the biggest supporter of 3D but neither am I the biggest detractor. When used correctly it can achieve effects like opening up huge vistas. When used incorrectly it can make the film look like a cheap diorama. While The Adventures of Tintin is a film I would happily watch in 2D and feel like I wasn't missing anything. In fact, it might even closer approximate the world of the original comics. It helps that Spielberg is one of the master directors of the modern age and thus understands how to utilise every tool at his disposal, 3D included.

Working from timeless and much loved source material (and culling from a number of Tintin adventures), Moffat and Wright & Cornish have worked up a fun, propulsive and intelligent script. Spielberg and Jackson have then gathered a note-perfect cast to help bring the characters to life. Spielberg, with WETA, has then taken all of these elements and filtered them through his own brand of cinematic alchemy to give Herge's intrepid reporter big-screen life. The Adventures of Tintin is Spielberg at his "fun, globe-trotting adventure time Spielberg" best. I look forward to seeing what Peter Jackson does with his follow-up adventure. 

X-MEN: FIRST CLASS: SEQUEL THOUGHTS

I'll be the first to admit that this post is little more than a bit of fan wank, but X-Men: First Class was one of the better comic-book movies this year and, with the recent DVD/Blu-Ray release I wanted to get some thoughts down on any possible sequel. 

It should be noted that the studio behind the X-Men films, Fox, have not stated whether they will be going ahead with a sequel to the prequel (what do you even call that?!). Hopefully they've merely been waiting for all of us to plonk out our hard-earned cash for the DVD/Blu* before they go ahead with the greenlight.

Ok! Let's get presequelling up in here!

The first (and second) things I'd love to have for a First Class sequel (Second Class?) would be director Matthew Vaughn and screenwriter Jane Goldman back. This dynamic duo were a large part of why this film worked in the first place (the fact it worked at all, let alone really well is a testament to their awesomeness) and to think of a sequel without them... well, that kinda sucks already.

More support from the studio would also be key to creating a successful sequel. By that, I mean more lead time given to the production/post-production. X-Men: First Class had a ridiculously truncated production period (which may have worked for it, forcing Vaughn to go with his gut rather than overthink things). The first lot of advertising for this blockbuster summer release didn't even hit until early this year! Usually studios are pimping their tent-pole films a year or more in advance (case in point: next years The Avengers has not only had Comic-Con presence, it's already had a teaser trailer attached to Captain America and a recently released trailer). In addition, the promotional material for the film was largely crap (who can forget the truly awful posters with James McAvoy's floaty head in Xavier's wheelchair-bound crotch?), so that aspect would need to be revised too.

For the film itself my main concerns would be that it didn't get packed unnecessarily with new mutants. One of the (many, many) failings of X-Men 3 was the simple fact that it became overstuffed with X-cameos; what the hell was the point of Angel (aka Warren Worthington II) in that film? Compare that with the inclusion of Nightcrawler in X-Men 2 (and the removal of a couple of uselss mutants such as Sabretooth and Toad). Hopefully, with a sequel to First Class they can largely avoid this trap, as the mutant race is still in its infancy. That being said I also hope they don't ditch all the mutants from the first class either.

I would also hope Xavier isn't taken out in the early stages of the conflict (see X-Men 1 - 3). You can see why the filmmakers decided upon this for each film - his mental powers are pretty all-powerful and he's crippled so can't really get up to too much traditional action. However, I would hope Vaughn/Goldman can come up with some exciting, intriguing stuff the young Professor could get up to on the battlefield. While, with his telepathy, he could take on an overall strategic view it would also be great to see a guy in a wheelchair kicking ass, right?

And lastly, I would love to see a greater exploration of the Xavier/Raven/Erik dynamic. I thought the Xavier/Raven relationship was one of the more intriguing tweaks on the X-mythos in First Class and McAvoy and Fassbender are too good not to have bouncing off one another again. While the corruption of their friendship felt a bit rushed in an effor to make First Class fit in established continuity, I think writers like Vaughn and Goldman could still work some great mileage from it.

Ok. So, that was some random blogger's thoughts on a possible sequel to a modestly succesful prequel to a film franchise that may have a fourth sequel greenlit. Thanks for reading and, yes, I do have X-characters I'd love to see in a sequel but I'll leave that to list making sites.

*on a side-note: I understand the reasoning the studios have for loading their Blu-Ray releases with far more content than their DVDs for the same film, I'm just getting a little pissed at it. Even when I had a full-time job I didn't have the spare cash to fork out for a Blu-Ray player, let alone the HD capable TV I would need to receive the full advantage of the format.

28.07: CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER

Just one of many cool alternate posters

Joe Johnston’s addition to the Marvel Movieverse is a rock ‘em, sock ‘em action film that is easily one of the best (so far). Captain America is all sorts of fun with noble good-guys, evil villains, a cracking adventure story and real character moments.

Chris Evans is Steve Rogers, a skinny sickly little guy desperate to serve his country during World War II. That fact alone, that they chose to go period with this film speaks volumes to me, about how much the filmmakers (or, yes, Marvel Studios) understand the character. Rogers, who has tried to enlist 5 times, is spotted by Stanley Tucci's Dr. Erskine and selected for a radical new experiment: to be the first of the new Super Soldiers. Of course, there's Hugo Weaving as the Eeeeeeeevil Herr Schimdt/Red Skull who simply won't allow that to be and so, just as the American scientists are celebrating the successful birth of the future Dr. Erskine is assassinated and his Super Soldier serum destroyed. Thus, Steve Rogers is the one and only Super Soldier: Captain America!

After a quick detour as a USO show attraction, Cap is in Europe rescuing captured soldiers (including his childhood buddy James "Bucky" Barnes) and hunting down the Red Skull's dark-science labs and Hydra minions, including Toby Jones' evil genius, Arnim Zola. These missions with the Howling Commandos (who are, sadly, never named as such. The characters are in fact never named) leave plenty of room for more adventures from WWII to be shown. There are neat little nods and tie-ins to the wider Marvel Movieverse – the Tesseract/Cosmic Cube from the Hall of Odin connecting in to Thor and Tony Stark's equally genius daddy Howard bringing in Iron Man- that never overwhelm this particular adventure or character.

Johnston and his team (cast and crew) get so very much right about the film and character; from the palette of the 40's to the retro-futuristic sci-fi to the unwinking all-around good-guyness of Cap. The whole film is unashamedly unironic. When I first heard of the decision to put Cap in the USO show, I was a little dismayed. It seemed like they didn't really know who Cap was. But the way they carry it off here, with a greedy Senator and breaking out the well-known costume, it helps give the otherwise arcless Steve Rogers a few great character moments and decisions. Chris Evans is perfect as Cap and never loses sight of the small, skinny Steve Rogers. He manages to carry off the “Aw shucks” moments with charisma, never feeling forced or ironic. Hugo Weaving impersonates Wernor Herzog for one of the all-time great Marvel villains; he is a full-tilt unrepentant psychopathic villain. Tucci and Tommy Lee Jones give so much more to their small characters, they help lift the whole film. Tucci gives Erskine a real, flawed, brilliant and gentle humanity while Jones, being a man with a self-confessed lack of humour, shows off his razor-sharp comic timing. I've never seen Hayley Atwell in anything before, but her Agent Peggy Carter, a British agent on loan to the project, is wonderful and more than a match for all the macho-ness around her. Her and Steve's growing relationship is the heart of the film and is so well drawn and played out with such effectiveness there's a real kick in the guts come the end - even for me, who knew what was coming.

There are a few minor quibbles I had with the film. Some of the effects, especially the green-screen stuff, is really not great. But even this, oddly enough, adds to the charm of the film. And the really important effects work, to make the huge Chris Evans a scrawny shrimp, is done pretty perfect. And though the inclusion of Marvel bad-guy organisation Hydra (or HYDRA) as a dark-science cult loyal to the Red Skull is cool, I would have dearly loved to see Cap punching some Nazis in the face. And it's small things like this, small missed opportunities, that are the only real faults with the story. For one thing, I wanted more! More of Cap and the Howling Commandos, more of Cap and Bucky fighting evil together. But wanting more is a very good criticism to have of a film.

Joe Johnston is perfect for this sort of rock 'em sock 'em two-fisted action. There are obvious parallels with his The Rocketeer and his work on Raiders of the Lost Ark. He's a decent enough director, not one of the greats by any stretch, but one who generally knows his way around a story and a film. And the whole team behind really "get" what Captain America is all about - not flag-waving jingoism and blind patriotism, but standing up for those ideals that helped shape America (before it all went to hell in the 70's). And they get the man, Steve Rogers, right and manage to never cross in to cheesey or winking and nudging territory. Captain America is all sorts of fun and I can't wait to see it again.

N.B. Stan Lee once again does a cameo – though, for once, he was not involved in the creation of Captain America. That was Joe Simon and Jack Kirby.

01.06: X-MEN: FIRST CLASS

Not one of the official posters but, well
they were rubbish weren't they?

Matthew Vaughn has finally made his Marvel superhero movie, and thank goodness for that. Vaughn was previously attached to X-Men 3 where he was all but set to shoot when he left for "personal reasons". We all know how that turned out: X3 was a steaming pile and Vaughn eventually went on to make the brilliant Kick-Ass. But before that he was also attached to Thor. Yep, the Marvel Norse god superhero movie that came out earlier this year. I believe the version he was attached to involved Asgard more, to the point of being told almost exclusively in that realm. Again, he left the project. And now, finally, he gets to come full circle and tackle the early days of Marvel's uncanny X-Men.

Like most, I'm no big fan of reboots or prequels or prebootquels or whatever the hell you want to call them. Prequels can, by the very nature of telling a story about characters you know from "future" installments, be the trickiest of the bunch. How do you create dramatic tension and tell a compelling story when we already know the end point for these characters' arcs? In the case of Vaughn and his screenwriting companion Jane Goldman, they do so by enlivening the genre in which it is told, by entangling the story of the X-Men into the real world and by bringing it back to that central relationship: that of Charles Xavier and his friend and enemy Erik Lensherr.

X-Men, as I mentioned in an earlier post, was an instrumental film in bringing the superhero into the mainstream. The film itself doesn't really stand up nowadays but back then it was something else. I still think X-Men 2 is one of the finest of the genre and, where most superhero films now focus on one character, the X-Men films have always been about the team; well, Wolverine and the team. But in ditching the feral adamantium-laced wonder and going back to how it all began they have actually managed to open up a whole new raft of story possibilities. And that seems to be one of the best tricks Vaughn and Goldman have pulled off: they acknowledge and respect the films that were made before, but they aren't entirely slavish to the continuity.

X-Men: First Class begins where the first X-Men film does; in fact it re-creates shot for shot the opening with young Erik Lensherr having his family ripped away from him. But First Class then expands on that, introducing us to the villain of the piece: Kevin Bacon's Sebastian Shaw. We're also shown a young Charles Xavier as he discovers the young shapeshifter Raven (the future Mystique) and takes her in. Cut ahead to the early 60's: Erik is a young man consumed by anger and revenge, encircling the globe hunting down Nazis and hunting for Shaw. Just like Nolan worked in his Bond film fetish into Inception, so has Vaughn done here with Michael Fassbender's Erik Lensherr: he's brutal, charming, deadly and just so fucking cool. And what's more, you understand his anger and his need for vengeance: Shaw killed his mother, Shaw tortured and experimented on him for years. Shaw stripped him of his humanity and turned him into a weapon. Life for the young Charles Xavier, however, is vastly different. He's studying genetics at Oxford, but we only see him down the pub drinking and picking up birds with lines about mutation. James McAvoy's Xavier is not the saintly saviour just yet; he is just a young man with naive, arrogant ideas. An annoyingly gifted and charming one who just assumes he's always right, equally at home in the worlds of academia and down the pub. But you can still see his desire to help his fellow mutants, even if he doesn't quite know how yet. An interesting addition to this mix is Jennifer Lawrence's Raven: she's grown up with Charles and followed him to Oxford. She struggles with her natural blue and scaly appearance and her "big brother" Charles is all but oblivious to it. The relationship between these two is one of the finest additions to the X-Men story and casts events in the other X-films in a new light.

Lawrence, McAvoy and Fassbender are, unsurprisingly, perfect and the chemistry between the three of them is different for each pairing (Xavier/Raven, Xavier/Lensherr etc.) but undeniable. Kevin Bacon is relishing his time as the Bond villain with a grand, insane plan to ruuule the world! Mwahahaha! He's creepy and thoroughly menacing. January Jones has less to do, and gives us less (unless you count skin) as the diamond skinned telepath Emma Frost. Getting similarly short shrift are the young mutants that make up that first class; most of them are barely defined past their powers with Nicholas Hoult as Hank McCoy/Beast being the only one to really have some time to shine (which is fine, as Hoult is great as the nervous hyper-intelligent Q of the X-Men). But these kids do give us some of the best bits of the film: Xavier and Lensherr finding them with Cerebro, the kids hanging out and showing off their powers, Xavier and Lensherr training them in the use of their powers. It's a more joyous, liberated feeling given to these gifts than is usually seen in the X-universe. And I'd just like to say, I am incredibly pleased they went with the classic (albeit tweaked) blue and gold uniforms. Those costumes suit this film down to the ground.

The fact that this was all made in 10 months is almost unbelievable but Vaughn and his team have pulled it off. And not only pulled it off, but made one of the best blockbusters of the year. The truncated production/post-production period shows in some places though: some FX work isn’t the best (notably in the flying sequences) and the film is relentlessly plot driven. But they still find time for those all important character moments. In fact, the biggest complaint I have is that I wanted more: I wanted more of Erik hunting Nazis like an angry, charming, super-powered 007. I wanted more of the relationship between Charles and Erik, of just seeing these two future leaders together. I wanted more of the 60’s societal vibe, this being the decade of the civil rights movement and more. There is a dash of that, but it feels more like really great flavouring to events than being a pivotal part of proceedings (the Cuban Missile Crisis aside). I hope the plan is to involve real, society shifting events in a sequel as they move deeper into the fractious decade.

X-Men: First Class marks a big, important step for Vaugh as a director. This is perhaps not as inventive in the action sequences (but they're still great) as his previous Kick-Ass but given the incredible time constraints and huge nature of this canvas, that is something easily forgiven. And that's another great thing: First Class hops around the globe and the central threat involves nothing less than total nuclear armageddon. It's a little bit larger and higher stakes than most other superhero films. Vaughn has managed to revitalise a struggling franchise and bring it back to the central relationship: the teacher Xavier and the leader Magneto. I, for one, am glad the Vaughn left X3; there he would've been telling a continuation and end of a story someone else started. With X-Men: First Class he gets to begin a new one.