X-Men: First Class

Objective Rating (How much merit I think it deserves):
8/10
Subjective Rating (How much I personally like it):
8/10

Year released: 2011
Runtime: 135 minutes
IMDB page: here

Always been a fan of the X-Men movies. Unlike a lot of the other superhero movies, X-Men never lost its classic touch and never compromised with boring villains that no one cares about. There's always central conflicts that hit close to home, and the acting is always a joy to watch.

This latest addition to the series is no exception. James McAvoy as Charles Xavier/Professor X and Michael Fassbender as Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto have been called "casting triumphs." In addition to the hotness factor, both men exhibit a sensitivity and vulnerability as the two characters meet, work together, understand each other, and then come to realize their goals are not the same even though they both want the best for mutants.

Ah, I kind of take it for granted that everyone is familiar with the gist of X-Men. In a nutshell, there are mutants with superpowers co-existing with normal humans. Humans are fearful (understandably) and try to keep mutants under control. While Professor X's X-Men attempt to counter this by helping humans and making them understand mutants mean no harm, Magneto's Brotherhood tries to destroy humans to make way for mutants, the next step of human evolution, as Magneto sees it.

This movie explores the two men's initial encounter and their subsequent cooperation to help avert the Cuban Missile Crisis, an incident led on by the manipulation of one Sebastian Shaw, a mutant from whom Magneto inherits his views on the mutant-human relationship.

The only question I may have on the movie is .... WTF is Kevin Bacon doing in an X-Men movie? He can have the creepiness factor, but you really don't think of him as the evil mastermind type. He does pretty well in the movie, but just seeing him in one of the opening scenes threw me off.

The soundtrack is very fitting to the epic nature of the tale. "Love Love" by the British man-band Take That serves as the ending theme. It is currently (08/28/11) being featured on the blog.

Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson

Get this book. You may think you are busy. You may think books are boring. Not this one. You'll make time for this book once you read into the first 10 pages. Honest.

The overall plot may not seem that original. Basically the machines take over the world from humanity, a la Terminator or The Matrix. But they have vastly different selling points. Terminator is about how one robot time-travels to save John Connor, and The Matrix is about an alternate reality created by the machines. Robopocalypse is about the details of exactly how the machines take over and how the humans try to fight them off. Lots of very creative gore involving human deaths/mutilations at the hands (ahem, appendages) of robots. The most disturbing part is how these were carried out mostly by mundane everyday machines like smart cars or domestic robots (well, this is a sci-fi novel after all. Of course everyone has domestic robots that mostly just carry groceries for people and stuff like that).

It certainly helps that Daniel H. Wilson is a robotics Ph.D so he knows what he's talking about when it comes to AI and robotic joints and diagnostic tests and such.

But this story also has a humane core. It reminds me of Babel, where lots of people's storylines come together and the action of each person contributes to the big picture. All of these people start out being extremely ordinary; you may have seen them on the bus today, which is what makes them extremely easy to relate to. And that makes the hardest impact when these people are faced with extraordinary circumstances and have to make extraordinary decisions.

This book has all the necessary elements to make you want to keep going even though it's already 4am. Or maybe I'm just crazy. But Steven Spielberg has already signed up to direct a movie based on this novel, scheduled to be released in 2013, so I guess I'm not the only one.