X-men movie

Yesterday evening, Brian, Max and I went to see X-men first class at the Sony Center.  Thanks to my brother's obsession with the animated show when we were kids (we watched it every Saturday at 10am) I'm familiar with the characters and have my favorites.  I was, however, unclear as to the beginnings of the X-men, and this story was rather interesting to me. 

the characters of X-men, First Class movie

Some notes about having seen this movie in Berlin as opposed to America:

• First, the backstory of Magneto(then, the polish Jew Erik, about 10 years old) begins as his family is separated as they enter a concentration camp in Poland in 1943.  For starters, Poland is currently less than 100 miles away from our location.  Also, the plight of Jews and other Holocaust victims in the early 1940s as documented by the many history museums in Berlin is fresh on my mind.  Brian later likened it to a Berliner watching an old American Western in Colorado (omg this is where that happened!) or my Yankee self watching "Gone with the Wind" in Atlanta.  At any rate, since I was unaware of Magneto's beginnings, a surprisingly thick layer of relevancy was depicted in this scene that I probably wouldn't have noticed as much had I seen it back home.
• When Shaw begins talking in this scene, it is in German with English subtitles.  This is met with roars of laughter by the mostly bilingual Berlin crowd (something that probably doesn't happen in America since nobody laughed at the English subtitles when the few French and Spanish conversations came on later).  At the end of the scene, Shaw ends up shooting Erik's mother to get him to use his power (which we now know is fueled through anger).  Though Shaw "works" for the Nazis, he doesn't really support their "stupid blond hair, blue eyes" values and simply uses their maniacal tactics to get results and find more mutants.
• In 1963, when the angry Erik, having survived the concentration camp, vengefully hunts down his mother's murderer, Shaw, who is hiding in Argentina.  He orders a beer at a restaurant that Shaw supposedly owns.  The beer is of German origin, and another roar of laughter from the moviegoing crowd erupts when the owners that are present tell him its "Bitburger" (kind of like a Budweiser or Miller in America). 

I enjoyed the movie, especially how they wove the story into more real events in history (though clearly a nearby parallel universe!) - the movie ends with the X-men involvement in quelling the Cuban Missile Crisis.  I imagine that these extra reactions from the crowd would not have occurred, had we seen this movie in America.