[ No spoilers ]
Going into the theater this morning I had high expectations for X-Men First Class. It has an 88% at RottenTomatoes.com which is very high for a movie of this genre. But after seeing the movie I’m surprised that it’s not much, much, higher. In a word it was awesome. In two words it was f#*&ing awesome. Longtime fans and newcomers to the series will both love this movie.
One thing I was expecting was that the pacing would be a bit slow, especially in the beginning, since this movie has to introduce every single character from scratch. But that wasn’t the case. The character building is intermixed with action and humor throughout the movie instead of the typical examples where they do an hour and a half of character/plot introduction and then finish with 30 minutes of action. In fact the character building runs right up until the very end. Brilliantly done.
I’m not going to go into any details because I don’t want to give anything away but the story is very well done. The basic plot is quite simple to follow. They didn’t do anything stupid by making it unnecessarily complex. And in truth the real story is the character development. Not the historical events themselves.
Best of all the acting in the movie is superb. It’s hard to say which actor did the better job: James McAvoy as Charles Xavier or Michael Fassbender as Erik Lehnsherr. And not that they were the only ones who shined. There wasn’t a weak link in the cast.
Finally, if you have never seen another X-Men movie then you won’t be missing anything in this story aside from a few inside jokes.
And oh by the way, best cameo appearance ever. 
Of course, you take no notice of the fact that every single female character ends up undressed in this movie at some point, and that none of them is allowed a role that has nothing to do with using sex in some way. Typical male fantasy.
Women who not brainwashed to accept this kind of treatment may find all this rather offensive, but we know that neither Hollywood nor male viewers are apt to find anything wrong with objectifying women.