Killing Darwin was stupid. In fact, they pretty much held to form with my overarching issue with these films in treating everyone as ultimately unimportant.

Except, of course, for fucking Mystique for some strange reason.

From the standpoint of the premise of the movie though? I’m good with it because it was an Xavier & Magneto origin story, as it should have been. I’m not a fan of the way they treated the students in FC, but I can live with it within the context of FC being the setup to showcase Charles & Xavier as an origin.

Had they followed with meaningful explorations of those students in further films while pushing X & Mags to the back instead of doing the Super Awesome Logan, Erik & Chuck MEGAMIX, FUCK YEAH!!! Episodes IV & V.... I think FC would look far better in cannon.

I definitely see where it falters within the big picture of the series, but as a standalone I think it’s very good. As you said, the Erick & Chuck stuff was very good. Ditto the villains. Hellfire Club – Shaw, Emma, Azazel? Yeah I’m happy with all that. For my money it’s the best we’ve seen from Magneto in particular.

That said, as long as these characters are treated as little more than a loose equivalent to the lazy approach taken with the aesthetic of MK’s palette swap ninjas, we’ll always get middling, tired and/or severely flawed X films.