Producing movies or TV series based on comics is hell. It is hell because comics have an incredibly huge and powerful community behind them. It is hell because it comprises characters with a rich and established history, spanning across realities, universes and story lines that are quite intricate and leave little margin to intervene creatively.

Deviations are shunned and punished while true story arcs are rewarded. But there are two takes on this.

On one hand, we have the DC Comics universe. Overall, this universe is rather incoherent, chaotic and fairly patched up due to often conflicts, plot holes and inconsistencies. While a weakness if you want to enjoy the universe in its entirety through the comics, it proved a great strength in the movies because it allowed directors like Burton or Nolan to patch up Batman (for example). Even more surprising, a movie like The Dark Knight which was completely outside the established story line was well received since it made much more sense and was a lot more powerful.

On the other hand, the Marvel Universe doesn’t leave this kind of liberty. It is more tightly knit, realities and timelines well-drawn and characters and stories are consistent. Therefore when Bryan Singer touched X-Men, eyes were on him. The liberties he took were heavily taxed and the X-Men movies managed only an average success.

In X-Men First Class, the mess is much more obvious. Why? Because not only does Singer mess with the Marvel timeline, he is inconsistent even with his own previous work. For example, in the first X-Men movie, Singer underlined the only truly “holy” thing in the X-Men arc: Cyclops and Jean Grey (originally called Marvel Girl) were founders of the group (alongside Beast – who is mentioned, Archangel and Iceman – who were skipped initially). Now, in the prequel, even his own previous work is forgotten and the resulting X-Men First Class is a mess.

If it were a new director, declaring a whole new take, it might’ve been forgiven. But this is Singer who declared a prequel. Sheesh. But wait, there’s more:

• Emma Frost is a damn ugly and talentless mess of an actress. Unlike the cold, ruthless White Queen of the comics, she proves to be worse than useless (and she’s supposed to be a leader in the Hellfire club!).
• Moira – she is called McTaggert, but in the “true” storyline she becomes McTaggert much later. After her initial relationship with Professor X, she marries an abusive boyfriend (McTaggert) before starting a line of relationships to other X-Men, which then make room to an on-and-off fiery relationship with Banshee (whom she meets much later).
• Mystique: the most gaping plot hole. Let’s skip the part that the original character has a history starting from the "start of the century with storylines involving WWII whereas in the movie she is a child toward the war’s end. Skip the fact she is a known antagonist to the the X-Men for most of the comics and joins (partially) way later. Skip that the actress chosen is damn annoying and barely looks ok-ish in the blue form. But Hank McCoy clearly states that she ages slowly and in 40 years will still look like a hot teen that she’s not. Then how the bloody hell did she age from a baby at the end of WWII to a full teen by the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis?!
• Alex Summers: Cyclops’ younger brother. Why is he part of First Class? Giving Singer the benefit of a doubt, why would he have reached Alex first and not Cyclops? Much like in any mutation-related material later, powers in X-Men manifest themselves around puberty (again, Mystique-fail and Xavier-fail for the movie). Being the older brother with a damn obvious (an initially uncontrollable power), there’s no way Cyclops could’ve been missed even if Alex were to be picked first. It goes on the lines of: hey professor, I have an older brother who shoots fire from his eyes! Also, in the movie Alex is useless. He hits an actual target twice in situations that would’ve been solved even without his involvement.
• Professor Xavier: ok, so he’s smart. Being a telepath an all, he doesn’t need much time to absorb knowledge so at least that’s good. The logic of his actions however fails when it comes to finding mutants, both in terms of in-movie logic and with respect to the previous movie (eg: in the first movies a fully functional Xavier finds Jean Grey with an already helmet-wearing Magneto).
• Magneto: he seems to be the most consistent of all and even the question marks are quite forgivable (mainly that his history with Xavier before their differences become public should be longer than just the time shown in the movie). The biggest in-movie inconsistency is this: Xavier gets to go on a super-secret spy mission and he chooses Magneto (whom he just met, a wildcard bent on revenge – note that while Xavier can read thoughts, he would need to do that 100% of the time in order to observe new impulses and ideas being born, something that he doesn’t do as in the time when Magneto bursts into the villa) but not Mystique, a true childhood friend (sheesh, the annoying deviation here) whom although raised and educated alongside Xavier, seems to act like a silly girl instead of a mature person (like Xavier) and whose talents would be of great use in infiltration (not to mention she’s loyal to Xavier).
• Sebastian Shaw: the leader of the Hellfire Club, he can absorb energy. He is responsible for the incredibly silly plot of the movie (yep, nuclear war would create and enhance mutations … sure, but not account for the fact that it would wipe out cellular life and block the Sun’s light for a few thousand years). But his energy absorbing power also shows inconsistency. For example: he is shown “charging” in the sub’s nuclear reactor by holding on two bars after ordering the reactor powered to 100%. WTF? Skip the fact nuclear reactors in subs don’t work like that. Take the closest reactor model: you have fuel rods and control rods. If you order the reactor to 100%, it means fuel rods inserted all the way and control rods extracted. Which is he holding? Logically it would be the control rods (graphite pieces) completely useless since they don’t emit energy. Well, if he were holding fuel rods (case in which the sub should be dead in the water or running slowly on batteries – useful in their case since it would be stealthy), that wouldn’t help him either since the fuel rods give out radiation, a very slow form of energy. Given the way Shaw uses the received energy (basically releasing it back in the desired direction and desired quantity according to the movie), all he could do after that would be to iradiate about 20cm around his body (ok, it would give Magneto radiation poisoning, but certainly not throw him around the room).

So is there anything good? Well, sure. Magneto does a nice part, the moment when Angel shows her wings is great, Hank McCoy (the only actual first class X-Man) is funny and interesting and Banshee is good too, has plenty of moment which leaves room for many regrets (no hit between him and Moira, bad timing, etc).

For a universe as interesting and complex as the X-Men, the movie flops inevitably. One deeply disturbing thing is the incessant insistence with which Hollywood producers try to introduce global catastrophes in every movie. Sure, it’s a great pretext for epic visual FX but there’s 0 content. It would be easy to build something on the lines of Supernatural (for example), where the roaming underworld filled with mutations and paranormal is well-covered and actually builds the feeling that it’s special.

However, from this perspective, First Class follows movies like Transformers towards the inclusion of senseless global events that have no point whatsoever.