X-Men: No Class

   OK, the film doesn't really have no class, but it's far from "first class" entertainment when it comes to tying into the other movies in the series.  It obviously was trying to tie into those movies based on cameos and other small things, but way to many things don't add up when it comes to series continuity.  That aside, the film was still enjoyable. I mean who doesn't want to watch X-Men fight Nazi's? OK sure, that doesn't technically happen, but it could have.

   Plot Synopsis: Before Charles Xavier (McAvoy) and Erik Lensherr (Fassbender) took the names Professor X and Magneto, they were two young men discovering their powers for the first time, working together to stop the greatest threat the world has ever known.  The film  features a star-studded supporting cast, including Academy Award-nominee Jennifer Lawrence (Winter’s Bone), January Jones (“Mad Men”), Rose Byrne (28 Weeks Later), Zoë Kravitz (“Californication”), Nicholas Hoult (A Single Man), Lucas Till (Walk the Line), and Emmy Award-nominee Oliver Platt (“The West Wing”).

   I'll start with the visuals like I did in my last review the transfer to the disc is great, very few flaws, and watching it HD rather than on the grainy theater screen was a true treat. (Jennifer Lawrence half naked most of the time didn't hurt either...) The effects were all pretty believable in this world, but nothing to write home about.

   The audio here was pretty standard, again nothing to write home about.  The only thing stood out as excellent to me was Magneto's daunting theme music, but nothing was blatantly bad so it's slightly above average at best. The sound mix worked well together, but it just felt like it was lacking something to me.

Now for the extras, this disc isn't packed full geeky goodness like some, but what it has is fantastic.  First off it starts with 10 free digital comics that help to tell the back story of the actual "first class" and they are all great, though I'm still adapting to the digital comic phenomena. Also included is a 7 part making of documentary, that while annoying to be broken into segments that run about 10 minutes a piece, is still a very fine documentary in the long run.  Several deleted/extended scenes are included (sorry I didn't count them and don't have the disc sitting next to me as I write this), as is some behind the scenes info on scenes, and a really cool feature that lets the viewer 'control' cerebro in a feature that when you find and click on the various mutants you get scenes from all of the films that mutant has been in within the live-action franchise.  The glaring  omission is the lack of a director's commentary.

Final grade is a 3 out of 5 on this one. There just isn't enough stuff to put this edition over the top.