The good thing about the X-men series is that it actually features a whole bunch of superheroes. Unlike most superhero movies which get stuck with a limited number of superhumans and hence tend to get boring, these flicks can actually invent new heroes and villains, whose abilities are only limited by imagination.
The last X-men movie centred around Wolverine. This one actually revolves around the anti-hero, Magneto. From his traumatic beginnings in a Nazi concentration camp, Eric Lensherr aka Magneto, moves through Charles Xavier’s friendship and finally ends up as the disillusioned anti-hero.
The plot, despite the myriad characters is fairly straight-forward. It is basically a revenge drama, with a few sub-plots about the origins of some important X-men, including Magneto, Mystique and Charles Xavier.A Nazi officer Dr. Schmidt, who recognises young Eric’s(magneto) mutant abilities forces him to display his uncontrollable abilities by killing his mother.
The trauma remains with young Eric who apparently wants to seek revenge against the ex-Nazi moves around the world looking for him. The elusive Schmidt has a new alias, Sebastian Smith, and it turns out that he too is a powerful mutant who has gathered his own private army of mutants to meet his nefarious objective of world domination.
Charles Xavier and Mystique are childhood friends, who join CIA’s new Mutant divsion along with Hank McCoy, another mutant. Together they build Cerebro, the mutant detecting machine that Charles uses to track down some mutants and recruit them. The plot moves on finally to the real-life Cuban Missile Crisis, where Charles and his mutant friends intervene to stop World War 3(LOL!), and Magneto exacts his revenge by killing his old enemy, Shaw. The film ends with Charles being disabled with an accidental spine injury, and parting ways with Magneto.
Not an exceptional storyline, but the visual effects, and curiosity about the beginnings of X-men makes an enjoyable weekend movie. Best watched in a Multiplex. I hope they make another movie about the origins of Jean Grey. She is another of those interesting mutants, and all others having been exclusively portrayed in these prequels, this one should not be deprived.