Lotion

Sometimes when we go out in public we act perfectly normal. Other times things get weird.

Tuesday was the Gnome and my third anniversary. We did the normal thing of going out to a romantic fancy restaurant for dinner, following it up with a romantic movie. Of course, we all know our definition of romance is slightly skewed compared to normal couples so while they might have gone and seen The Love Story: A Romantic Love Story That Tells the Story of a Lover and Their Love, we saw X-Men: First Class.

XFC was very enjoyable and completely makes up for the original X-Men Trilogy. It was smart, entertaining story telling that skirted the line between being an entertaining action movie and a commentary on politics and prejudice without getting preachy. I had thought that the cast of young mutants they had picked was weird when I first heard about it, but seeing them in the movie it worked. The minor roles that needed to exist but without adding too much to the story were filled by minor mutants, so you weren’t upset when they didn’t get as much screen time as you wanted. Meanwhile, the characters you did care about: Beast, Mystique, Prof. X and Magneto got the screen time needed but had a cast of characters to interact with so that things didn’t get boring.

An X-Men movie hinges strongly on the strength of Magneto, regardless of whether he’s a villain or a hero. Ian McKellan left huge shoes to fill after the first three movies. Despite how much I disliked those films, I loved his Magneto. Michael Fassbender did an excellent job of taking the crazed boy in the concentration camps shown both in the original films and again in XFC and the stoic anti-hero McKellan portrayed so well and showing the progression of one to the other. Somebody of lesser screen presence in this role would definitely have weakened the movie.

There’s always a chunk of time in between movies I see that have Kevin Bacon in them. During that time I always forget how good of an actor he really is until I see him again. His Sebastian Shaw was perfect for XFC and was the greatest blend of 60s villain into one perfect package. It’s disappointing that I wait so long between Bacon movies. Might need to fix that.