First Class is just that

I finally found the time to go and see X-Men: First Class and it was good. It might even be my favourite of all the X-Men films. It's certainly much better than The Last Stand and Origins: Wolverine. We got younger versions of characters we know and the parents of some others. They're all discovering each other, finding out that they're not alone and working on controlling their powers.

I've been trying to figure out how the timeline all works out, which is tricky when you've got some characters that have lived for so long. When does the US government discover mutants? Here in the sixties it seems that the CIA either doesn't know or doesn't believe in their existence. Now obviously the Nazis discovered Magneto in the early forties and probably had others as well. Did they know about Sebastian Shaw at that point? Then there's Wolverine who has been around since the 1800s but he remains unknown until he's drafted in to a military mutant squad after surviving a firing squad in the Vietnam War. If I have my dates right that's after this, but not too long afterwards. It's all very complicated. Was that Chris Evans as a young Steve Rogers I saw? I guess not now I think about it, Captain America starts during World War II so the timing is all wrong. Also the X-Men films are run by a different studio to all The Avengers related stuff, but it did look like him.

Of course not everything quite fits with the other films anyway. In this prequel/reboot they've chosen to concentrate on story rather than continuity, looking on IMDB I see there are more inconsistencies than I spotted but that's not really important. This is a story of Charles and Erik, their relationship and their motivations. I was never really thinking about the continuity during the film, only afterwards. The acting is great as are all the other things, direction, effects, sound etc. Highly recommended be me even if you haven't seen any of the other films.