On June 3, 2011, the next movie in the X-Men film franchise hits silver screens.
X-Men: First Class is a prequel, taking movie goers back in time to the 1960’s, when Cuba played a critical role in world events and Charles Xavier (Professor X) and Erik Lehnsherr (Magneto) were still friends, founding a school of gifted mutants. While the cast is impressive, featuring James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender and Kevin Bacon, I can’t help but feel kicked in the groin so far.
Here is the newest trailer for X-Men: First Class:
Looked good, didn’t it? Why kicked in the groin? The previous films destroyed so much continuity—specifically having Iceman and Angel not be part of the original team—that this prequel is almost doomed in my eyes from the start. It’s going to be hard for me to turn my own X-Men comic book continuity off, even though it looks like they got the relationship between Charles and Erik right. Why didn’t Marvel just forget those other three films happened? Why not do the origin story right, previous films be damned?
Does this bother you at all? Or am I the only one?
June 3rd will tell me what I need to know. I just hope I can be open to it.
I’m actually okay with the comics and the movies having different continuities. I think each medium needs to understand both its strengths and limitations. Trying to pack 40 years of monthly soap opera into 100 minutes of screen time would just confuse the “newbies” and still disappoint the uber-fans.
And honestly, hasn’t both Marvel and DC done this themselves over the years? It’s not as though Peter Parker is 66 years old in the current comic books, is he? If the monthly books occasionally reset, I think they can reset for the movies, too.