X-men: First Class/Franchise

WARNING SPOILERS
By: Stiz

So, this Saturday I had the great pleasure of watching X-Men First Class in theaters with a couple of friends. It had a good ensemble cast, great story that moved at an incredible pace, and directed by someone who understands how to make an engaging movie. However, rather than talking about how great First Class was, I want to talk about one comment made by one Bob "Moviebob" Chipman, saying that due to events happening or characters appearing in First Class now X-Men The Last Stand and X-Men Origins Wolverine are no longer in continuity with the rest of the films. As a fan of the films, I must point out that retconning just doesn't work that way. You can't say that the bad (or in Last Stand's case, the adequate) films are no longer in canon with the rest of the franchise. If you do go that route, then you have to go that route with the good films as well. Fans can say that The Last Stand isn't canon anymore as scenes like Xavier and Magneto visiting Jean Grey in the first scene of the film never happened as in this scene Xavier is still walking and Mangeto still goes by Erik. Fair enough, but I can say the same regarding X-Men, seeing that Xavier and Magneto didn't meet when they were 17 and they did not build the first Cerebro together. Hell, if I want to be really technical I could say X2 isn't canon either given how Magneto also mentions how he helped Charles build Cerebro and we saw a cameo of Hank McCoy NOT in Beast form in that film. I heard that apparently Beast shed his skin at the end of First Class, but if you didn't put it in the movie, THEN IT'S NOT CANONICAL.

I actually watched my aunt's copy of Wolverine (so as to avoid having to spend my own money to see it) and I do understand people's wanting to forget Wolverine. It lacked the intelligence that made the first two films great, it wasn't a very engaging story and it felt like Fox could just slap Wolverine's name on something and people would go buy it. On top of that, it felt very insulting to Wolverine's character, given how he couldn't smell out that his girlfriend's supposedly dead body was fake and she had no wounds, and they play Wolverine's metal claws for laughs IMMEDIATELY after he had the experiment, not to mention the continuity error of him getting shot in the head with a normal bullet and shaking it off but in X2 when that happened Wolvie was knocked out for a good minute!

However, I would not wish the same fate on X-Men The Last Stand. Obviously, there are things I don't like about it, such as Magneto discarding Mystique the moment she turns human, turning Rouge into a human, Bobby and Kitty's ice skating scene slowing the film down AND providing a bad motivation to try and be normal in the first place, Colossus was a non-character, Angel's pointless sub-plot, and Mystique's dialogue regarding humans. What do you mean by "slave name", Mystique? Were you treated like a slave with your old family? This is especially odd when you put First Class into perspective. So, apparently your "slave name" is the name you were perfectly fine with when you were around your best friend for 20 years, Mystique?! It just makes her come off as a woman whose "eyes have been opened" by a cult leader. While it clearly isn't as smart as Bryan Singer's films, I can appreciate the good parts of the movie. Kelsey Grammer as Beast was fantastic, I liked how they introduced the mutant cure and brought up how some mutants are more accepted amongst the community. Juggernaut was great to see as was Kitty Pryde taking him down. Magneto had a good moment of respecting Xavier after his death, and speaking of Xavier, someone calls him out on tampering with Jean's mind, even if it was for the right reasons. Seeing Bobby actually TURN into Iceman was another fun moment. The action is some of the best I've seen in all of the X-Men movies, and if I may backtrack a bit, some of my favorite scenes regard Beast's reaction to the cure, like saying that it's not a bad thing for some people to want the cure (especially since he can't blend in like everyone else), and seeing his hand turn normal when he meets Leech is a beautiful piece of acting on Grammer's part. In fact, I'd actually say that Beast's wanting a cure in First Class adds a bit of sadness to his character in scenes like that. Also, there were some deleted scenes I wish were in the movie, like seeing the cure being mass produced, Storm pulling off some lightning fu on Maya from Heroes while using Wolverine's claws to electrocute Juggernaut, and some scenes with Jean indicating that the only reason Magneto is leading his rebellion is because Jean LET'S him. Yes, Cyclops and Xavier died, and while Cyclops death was annoying, he honestly didn't have much of a presence in X2, so if the films stopped at X3, I'd tolerate his death. Regarding Xavier, however, to be honest I appreciated the risk of killing him off. I like the idea of the X-Men having to continue on without their mentor.

So yeah, I didn't care for Wolverine, but I think Last Stand has potential. However, if you really want the film to be non-canon, retcon it the RIGHT way. Have Bishop or Cable or someone from the X-Men's future travel back in time to the point where Scott discovers Jean. Say that Apocalypse rules the world in the future and they need a class 5 mutant to stop him, but Apocalypse finds her and makes The Phoenix his servant (and I mean the fire-bird phoenix we saw in X2). Now, Cyclops is alive and the X-Men have to save the future. You get a good movie and you get to retcon the film that "ruined the franchise."

 Here's how you can retcon X-Men canon properly. There's a website called fanedit.org that has a three hour edit of the first 3 movies called X-Men Requiem War which I suggest you check because throughout the edit they're building up the Phoenix and the Last Stand parts of those films work really well, and the edit is at least honest about the unfortunate unimportance of Cyclops.

So to wrap up, First Class has the intelligence and sophistication of the the first 2 films, but the good action of the third and if you want to retcon do it properly