Finally there is humans, full of confussion alienated and kind of lost young humans who may either physically look like true monsters or posses sublime incomprehensive and in consecuence feared gifts, but at the end one can find true human emotions behind all that ... and this is something you cannot achieve just through fine cgi or a nice casting.
Finally the most spectacular elements to watch in a X-MEN movie arent the fantasy-fight secuences, the magic of flying getting real or the shapeshifting habilities put on display ... Finally the most fascinating element to look in a X-MEN movie is watching the metaphors working, those that did allow from the beginning of comics to speak about social crisis and the fights of groups to gain spaces denied by others, timeless stories that just happens to fit almost perfectly during the sixties. This is mythology at its best, telling the old tale about one that became two, an idea and a stand that derived into two understandable and by its own means likeable new ideologies, two messianic leaders emerging from almost opposite backgrounds.
For me the greatest thrill delivered by this movie comes from the scene where it show us the tragedy of that future imagined by Xavier, one full of beauty, tolerance and peace, some kind of science-driven but also a little bit hippie utopia split into two paths, the other driven by anger, revenge and arrogance but also in a way driven by proud and simply reaction. Those paths that we get clear would never join again. Is almost as tragic and dramatic as a longtime crush telling you details about a recent date, as sadly as watching the crucial moment when your imaginary "romantic path" split and send you into a "best friend path" until the moment you cant even see the other road anymore. As sad as that.
The movie also find the way to keep the charming of the classic comics ¿What can be more classic-villanesque than a highly advanced sub-marine nuclear base in the middle of the Antartic? ¿More cliche, but then again classic and in this particular case coherent, tan being the nazies who in a way unchained everything that appear as "pure evil"? ¿More star war-esque than that speech between Shaw (a very malevolent and reptilian Bacon just like in that old movie Sleepers) and Erik about joining powers like father and son? Maybe is me but I even found some kind of Watchmen influence and homage in the turning events involving nuclear menace and what humans saw as a common threat.
Anyway one thing I expected to see was more pop-culture refference, but that is just me, on another hand I think Marvel movies still have to find a way to develop more credible on-screen romantic stories ... or just get rid of them at all. But even when X-MEN : FIRST CLASS its a "origins story" and well you basically know where everything and everyone will be at the end it is so well done that all the "how" became fascinating.
If I were the director I would have hard times conceiving the next step in the X-MEN : FIRST CLASS (that sometime will be just, you know ... X-MEN) franchise, what seems clear is that this movie has managed to estabilish the humanity behind the X-MEN ideologies but also to conceive in a deeper manner also the ideology behind THE BROTHERHOOD OF MUTANTS so the plastische of the "good vs evil" plot (like in the Autobots-Decepticons dynamic) to me appears kind of obsolete for now on, and should be left in favor of more complex stories about the figths and crisis in the "mutants and humans" stands.