First Class: In or Out of Continuity?
Jun. 2nd, 2011 12:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrasteSo, I just got back from the film! (And pancakes afterwards.)
The non-spoilery version is: I adored it. James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender lived up to the examples of their illustrious predecessors. It was just as slashy as James McAvoy said it would be. (Um, not that James McAvoy put it in those terms, but ...) While there were a couple of things I didn't like, I thought that it was a wonderful movie in almost every way. Did I mention it was slashy? The scene with the satellite dish damn near killed me. (You will know what I'm talking about when you see it.)
Since almost nobody else has seen it yet, I will avoid posting my spoilery speculations for a few days. However, I thought people might be interested to know how the film fits in with the previous X-Men trilogy and Wolverine. There are no specific spoilers below the cut for anything outside the trailers, just some general impressions.
It's about what everyone thought after seeing the trailers and other material: this is clearly intended to be set in the same universe, but there are some major contradictions. Since the film contains many references to the other films (including one scene that is a shot-for-shot reproduction of something from X1) it's obviously not meant as a pure reboot. It also retcons or ignores a lot of things.
The stuff we already know about from trailers is all as we thought: Emma Frost's role here contradicts what we saw in Wolverine: Origins. Hank's mutated appearance differs markedly from what we saw in X3. Moira's age is also inconsistent with that film. There are at least half a dozen other things that I spotted. It may be worth mentioning that the contradictions are spread evenly across all three films - they're not just wiping X3 and Wolverine out of continuity and keeping the first two. (In fact, one pretty important plot point from X2 gets tossed out the window.)
This didn't particularly bother me in the end, since I'm used to comics where continuity changes on a monthly basis, but it may upset some people. I'll be interested to see how they move forward if the next two movies get greenlit.
The non-spoilery version is: I adored it. James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender lived up to the examples of their illustrious predecessors. It was just as slashy as James McAvoy said it would be. (Um, not that James McAvoy put it in those terms, but ...) While there were a couple of things I didn't like, I thought that it was a wonderful movie in almost every way. Did I mention it was slashy? The scene with the satellite dish damn near killed me. (You will know what I'm talking about when you see it.)
Since almost nobody else has seen it yet, I will avoid posting my spoilery speculations for a few days. However, I thought people might be interested to know how the film fits in with the previous X-Men trilogy and Wolverine. There are no specific spoilers below the cut for anything outside the trailers, just some general impressions.
It's about what everyone thought after seeing the trailers and other material: this is clearly intended to be set in the same universe, but there are some major contradictions. Since the film contains many references to the other films (including one scene that is a shot-for-shot reproduction of something from X1) it's obviously not meant as a pure reboot. It also retcons or ignores a lot of things.
The stuff we already know about from trailers is all as we thought: Emma Frost's role here contradicts what we saw in Wolverine: Origins. Hank's mutated appearance differs markedly from what we saw in X3. Moira's age is also inconsistent with that film. There are at least half a dozen other things that I spotted. It may be worth mentioning that the contradictions are spread evenly across all three films - they're not just wiping X3 and Wolverine out of continuity and keeping the first two. (In fact, one pretty important plot point from X2 gets tossed out the window.)
This didn't particularly bother me in the end, since I'm used to comics where continuity changes on a monthly basis, but it may upset some people. I'll be interested to see how they move forward if the next two movies get greenlit.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-06 07:08 am (UTC)It's not the biggest contradiction with the first three films, but it's probably the one that bugged me the most. Everyone makes such a big deal of Erik helping to build Cerebro, and now we find out Hank did it instead?
Trying to make all the films fit together is not quite a futile as trying to make all the comics fit together, but at this point there's no way to get all the details from First Class to match with the other four.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-06-06 03:49 pm (UTC)I suppose I hold movies to a higher standard than comics, partially because of how there have only been four (well, three...two and a half?) as opposed to 70 years of Marvel, how each film is only a couple of hours long, and they change hands and get reset with less frequency than comics. As a result, I'd hope they could fit together more easily than the comic universe, but the impossibility of that given how few films will eat away at my analytical tendencies for a while.
On the other hand, I'm both an Xavier and Magneto fanboy and from what I've read, I should be happy regardless if I can shut that part of my brain up.
The fanfiction realm is definitely going to be different now.