Dave: This one was obviously made for hardcore X-Men fans—a group I do not count myself among. Don’t get me wrong–I’ll watch just about every comic-book movie put to market, but I don’t really have the time and energy to invest into reading up on their stories. I saw maybe five characters I recognized, and besides the Prof & Mag-f*cking-neto, I don’t really care about their origin stories. I know there’ll be a more mass-market trailer that introduces the principal characters in a way that a comic book-culture plebian like myself (who found all four X-Men movies of the last decades passable) can understand, but for now I’ll probably watch this one a few times to understand exactly what the hell is going on.

Will: Something like “cautious optimism” met with “cautious skepticism.” For a while there it seemed like we were hearing a new First Class casting update every damn week, which worried me then that it would become another case of too many cooks/mutants in the kitchen — read: X-Men 3, or the last hour of Origins: Wolverine. But then again, I didn’t care for the Kick-Ass comics, but thought Matthew Vaughn did a fantastic job with the movie adaptation. Here’s hoping First Class works towards curing the X-Men film’s horrible case of convoluted prequel-itis.