Thursday, June 09, 2011

Cos Everybody Needs Some Background Story At Times

As far as movie franchises go, X-Men happens to be one of the few that I've actually made an effort to catch (background story: I'm not an avid moviegoer), and that is how I'd like to think I ended up in a cineplex after work yesterday amidst loud popcorn crunchers and children in pyjamas. 

Funny thing about children, though.. there are was this huge family with lots of little kids in front of us, and one of them started whining (this was before the movie started), and I accidentally said "shhhh" out aloud and inadvertently set a good example to the (presumably) older sibling who said "shhhh" when the younger one started whining again. 

But I digress...

(Plot spoilers may lie ahead like landmines - so skip this if you haven't watched X-Men First Class and want to be surprised when you do)

Long before most of us were born, a boy sees his mother being shot when he couldn't repeat some magic with metal which he was seen performing earlier under duress. In another place around the same time, another boy meets someone similar to him, finally proving his theory that he was not alone. This is the story of X-Men, long before they were known as such, long before Professor X and Magneto decided that they didn't want to necessarily be on the same team, and long before the mutants knew what the were capable of. 

The story progresses with both boys getting older - one seeking revenge for the monstrosities set upon him and his power to have his way with metal, the other, reaching professor-hood despite his boyish good looks with his thesis on mutants. On the other hand, an evil plot (after all, what is a movie without an evil plot being hatched somewhere?) is being plotted, and the CIA gets involved and all these events lead to the inevitable joining of forces between Mr.Boyish-Good-Looks aka Charles X Xavier aka Professor X and the Boy Who Seeks Revenge aka Erik aka Magneto as they attempt to avert the evil plot with the help of a CIA agent, and a few trained mutants. Nevertheless, where there are humans, there is always trouble. Seeing how powerful the mutants are, after they had successfully averted the evil plot (a war), the two parties which almost went into war with each other targeted the mutants instead, which ultimately led to them to split into the two factions as we know them. 

Some other things worth mentioning in no particular order:
1. A bunch of young untrained mutants were having fun and decided that Magneto and Professor X were suitable names for Erik and Charles respectively. While it was initially brushed aside by them, in the end, they did stick to those names!
2. Charles X Xavier, as a young man had a thing for his mop of hair on his head. If only he could see the future!
3. He also had one of the cutest pick up lines ever.
4. The cameo appearance by a certain someone explains why women over 30 can be caught giggling like infatuated teenagers.
5. One word to describe this movie: Awesome.

4 comments:

  1. This is a flick I TOTALLY need to see and I was a comic collector of the series as a young lad. Professor X with a mop of hair? LOL!

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  2. I have really good memories of watching the X-Men cartoon with my older son when he was in kindergarten.

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  3. The thing about comic books being turned to movies is that they completely rewrite what I used read and know as a kid.

    I'm an avid comic book reader and have tons and tons and I mean tons and tons of Marvel and DC comics from m childhood and can recite to you every origin of every superhero better than my school subjects so while I'm excited to see my fav comic heroes come to life, I always cringe in fear at how they would reinvent the characters background, but I suppose they need to make it appealing to everyone I guess.

    With that said and done, I think I'm going to catch the X-men First Class today :D

    Phew, that has to be my longest comment on anyone's blog ever ... LOL!

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  4. Ricardo: Indeed... I wish I had read the comics, though...

    SAW: I somehow managed to miss watching the cartoons as well.

    Nick: Ha ha.. A very long comment indeed. I missed out on the comics in my younger years, so I'm cool with the movies, but I sometimes feel that way when books are turned into movies where they deviate too much from the original.

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