X-Men: First Class Movie, Second Rate Team

So I totally forgot to put up my X-Men First Class review after screening it Thursday night. In short, I liked it. A lot. I don't know if it's my favourite X-Men movie (repeat viewings may decide it) but it's at least equal to the previous franchise high, X2. As to be expected from the director of Kick Ass, this film goes a little more in depth with the characters than your average superhero movie. The relationship between young Professor X and Magneto is perfectly handled, with Michael Fassbender (quickly becoming one of my favourite actors) particularly brilliant as Erik on the verge of going to the dark side. The film almost works as his origin story, with the concentration camp opening of the first X-Men movie even redone.
Formerly two-dimensional characters such as Mystique are also given some good development (though it's weird to see her as Charles' childhood friend). The supporting cast is also good, including Kevin Bacon as villain Sebastian Shaw and great character actors like Michael Ironside and Oliver Platt in minor roles. The only actor I didn't really care for was January Jones, who was a little wooden as Emma Frost.
The action is good and the film has plenty of sex appeal (especially in the scene where Rose Byrne goes undercover in the Hellfire Club - amusingly she's already wearing some sexy underwear so she can blend in with the other girls there). All in all the film turned out amazingly well for one that was pretty much rushed into production.
So why don't I think it's the ultimate X-Men movie? The main problem is that, since it's designed as a prequel, it can't feature any of the characters from the other films except those that are old enough to still be around in the 60's. This means that, aside from Beast, the filmmakers are stuck with a bunch of second-rate characters as the first official X-Men, including a flying stripper who spits firebombs and a Ron Weasley lookalike with a really powerful scream. The film still works, but it would have been even more awesome if it had been a reboot (and I normally hate reboots). That way we could have got the real first class that all the fans wanted to see - namely Angel, Cyclops, Ice Man and Jean Grey. Instead we're stuck with Cyclops' younger brother (who is actually his older brother or dad in this). Yes, it's fun to see Mystique and Nightcrawler's potential future dad meet up, but a clean break would have given the movie more resonance while still keeping the same Cuban Missle Crisis plot.
So while the film is something of a missed opportunity, it will hopefully pave the way for a new series of X-Men movie that go places the other films were afraid to go. And if nothing else, it's worth seeing for perhaps the funniest cameo of all time.