X-Men: First Class.

We get to see the formation of the Children of the Atom team. Going from the trials, triumphs, and tragedies. We get quite the insight into the true motivations and what made Charles Xavier and Magneto. Set during the Cuban Missile crisis, we also get quite the look at early sixties history and quite the reminder of the Cold War mentality of the struggle between the Soviet Union and the United States.

Overall I felt I got my money's worth. Of course, I'm the guy that actually liked X-Men 3 and Wolverine. This was the first movie I saw this year that was worth paying full price.

Now let's have some fun by riffing it. There were some technical glitches I noted. In the scene where Eric is trying to turn a giant satellite, I could easily tell that not a whole lot of time was spent animating it. Then there was a scene of the Soviet ship carrying the missiles to Cuba, it too looked as if somebody forget to touch it up before being sent out to theaters.

Another part were the weapons being carried by the CIA agents in Russia. They looked like late model M-16s. In what research I did for this article, the M-16 was in development long before 1962, doubtful that even the CIA would have a variation that looked like ones from the 1980's or 1990's. These things were only on screen for split seconds, so I couldn't get a good look at them. Going to have top wait for the DVD to come out and freeze frame it to tell. Probably going to have to come back in here and line through this section.

I never really understood how Magneto's powers could affect non-magnetic metals such as brass. I totally understand iron, steel, and tin, but copper wires? Is he using magnetic fields to do this? Take a magnet and try and pick up an aluminum can. In the movie Magneto twists around the railing of a brass bed to choke out Emma Frost. How is this possible? Guess I should just chalk it up to comic book logic and move on.

To Mystique. Aside from Magneto and Xavier, she is one of the most well developed characters in this movie. What I don't like is her character design. It looks like scales of a fish or the exoskeleton of an insect. Is it some sort of clever way to get a naked woman on screen as much as possible? In the comics and cartoons it's just blue skin. Why take all the time for this kind of make-up job? Star Trek was able to pull off the green skin of Orion women back in 1965 and it looked good.

My final critique: They claim that it is nuclear energy that is creating the mutations that we see. How do you explain Xavier, Eric, Raven, Emma, Shaw, Riptide, and Azezel, who were all born before any atomic testing began? Madam Curie? How about Wolverine and Beast? Was there radiation in the chemical used in flash photography of pre-Civil War?

My my my: One more: There was no bonus scene. Most of the theater stayed through the credits. I saw a few people come back in. Apparently remembering that there is usually some teaser. We were all verbally disappointed by that. Especially me. I had to pee really bad. I waited through all that for nothing. I almost didn't make to Subway in time before it closed. I was expecting someone to find Bucky frozen in ice. Or Peter Parker stumbling into the Auotbot Ark. Maybe even Barbara Morse getting hit with a gamma bomb.

I think I'm tapped out. Go see it, it's worth you time and money. Though maybe they could have done a better job of editing the training sequence scene together like how it was done in 24.