Toomb’s New Releases for Friday 6/3 – (Mutant Edition)

It’s that time of year people, the budgets are high and the releases are few, it must be Hollywood Summer Blockbuster Season. While Hollywood scales back their number of releases, they simultaneously jack up the budgets in hopes of catching that all-important tidal wave of summer enthusiasm (as long as you’re not wanting anything rated R).

This weekend we’ve got one new release, the prequel (and hopefully decent reboot to) the X-Men franchise… X-Men: First Class. I’ve been reading the X-Men comics since I was 11 years old, and they’ve always been my hands-down favorite super heroes. Forget Superman (too milquetoast), forget Spiderman (too much of a geek), forget Batman (but do not forget Chistopher Nolan’s immaculate films based on him)… The X-Men are the best of the best.

In the world of the X-Men, human evolution has taken another turn in the 20th century, and due to evolutionary, environmental, and other “factors,” people are being born with an extra gene… the “X Gene.” When these people hit puberty, and their bodies start to change, the X Gene kicks in and they begin to show powers. Labeled mutants and cast out from society, whether their families or communities or society in general, due to fear of the abnormal… they have very few places to turn for help in their struggles. They are “ordinary” people with extra-ordinary powers, who are put in incredible situations. Mutants (as they are referred to affectionately and with hatred) are the outcast, the unwanted, the feared… and yet they hold the key to defending and saving the very world that rejects them.

Whether a holocaust survivor with a penchant for bending metal with a look, or a young man who finds the ability to peer inside others’ minds,the “mutant problem” is escalating in this world’s version of the 1960s. Two friends, Charles Xavier (James McAvoy), and Erik Lensherr (Michael Fassbender), are two young men discovering their powers. They join up with other mutants to stop the looming threat of nuclear war. Meanwhile a rift grows between the two forces, and they split into two factions, with Professor X’s X-Men and Magneto’s Brotherhood of Mutants… a war that will rage for decades.

X-Men: First Class tells the origin story of the X-Men, set against the back-drop of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and is certain to be a fun ride. It is rated PG-13.

Also playing this weekend are: (thanks Google)