Films of 2011

Top 10 films of 2011General research and trivia

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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 is a 2011 epic fantasy-drama film directed by David Yates and the second of two films based on the novel Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling. It is the eighth and final instalment in the Harry Potter film series, written by Steve Kloves and produced by David Heyman, David Barron, and Rowling.

Synopsis

The final chapter begins as Harry, Ron, and Hermione continue their

quest of finding and destroying the Dark Lord’s three remaining Horcruxes, the magical items responsible for his immortality. But as the mystical Deathly Hallows are uncovered, and Voldemort finds out about their mission, the biggest battle begins and life as they know it will never be the same again.

Filming

Principal photography began on 19 February 2009, and was completed on 12 June 2010,with the final day of reshoots

taking place on 21 December 2010, marking the series’ closure of ten years of filming. Part 2 was released in 2D, 3D and IMAX cinemas worldwide from 13–15 July 2011, and is the only Harry Potter film to be released entirely in 3D.

Box Office

The film opened to critical acclaim and is among the best reviewed films of 2011.At the box office, Part 2 claimed the worldwide opening weekend record, earning $483.2 million, as well as

Adventure / Drama / Fantasy / Mystery Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert GrintDirector: David Yates

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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows pt 2

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setting opening day and opening weekend records in various countries.

The film is currently the third highest grossing film of all time, the highest grossing film of 2011, the highest grossing film in the Harry Potter series, and the ninth film ever to gross over $1 billion.

DVD Release

The Blu-ray and DVD sets were released on 11 November 2011 in the United States, and was released in the United Kingdom on 2 December

2011. In October 2011, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 was declared the highest pre-ordered Blu-ray and DVD ever by Amazon.com. The film was also released in the Harry Potter: Complete 8-Film Collection box set on DVD and Blu-ray, which included all eight films and new special features. Part 1 and Part 2 were released as a combo pack on DVD and Blu-ray on 11 November 2011, in Canada.

• Daniel Radcliffe as Harry Potter, the film’s protagonist.• Rupert Grint as Ron Weasley, Harry’s best friend and Hermione’s romantic interest.• Emma Watson as Hermione Granger, Harry’s best friend and Ron’s romantic interest.• Ralph Fiennes as Lord Voldemort, an evil, power-hungry wizard, and the leader of the Death Eaters. The chief antagonist of the series.• Michael Gambon as Albus Dumbledore, former headmaster of Hogwarts killed two films earlier by Severus Snape.• Alan Rickman as Severus Snape, former Potions and Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher and the new headmaster of Hogwarts.• Tom Felton as Draco Malfoy, a Death Eater

and son of Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy.• John Hurt as Ollivander, a wandmaker abducted by the Death Eaters.• Maggie Smith as Minerva McGonagall, the Transfiguration teacher and the Head of the Gryffindor house at Hogwarts.• Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix Lestrange, a Death Eater and Sirius Black’s cousin and murderer.• Jason Isaacs as Lucius Malfoy, Draco Malfoy’s father and a disgraced Death Eater.• Kelly Macdonald as Helena Ravenclaw, the ghost of Ravenclaw at Hogwarts. Macdonald replaces Nina Young, who portrayed the character in a cameo in the first film.• Gary Oldman as Sirius Black, Harry’s godfather. Killed in battle three

films earlier by Bellatrix Lestrange.• Robbie Coltrane as Rubeus Hagrid, Harry’s half-giant friend and a former staff at Hogwarts.• Warwick Davis as Filius Flitwick, the Charms master and Head of the Ravenclaw house at Hogwarts; and Griphook, a goblin and former employee at Gringotts Bank. For the role of Griphook, Davis replaces Verne Troyer, who portrayed the character in the first film.• David Thewlis as Remus Lupin, a member of the Order of the Phoenix and a former Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts.• Julie Walters as Molly Weasley, the Weasley matriarch and a mother figure to Harry.

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Cast

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Box Office all time records

As a result of the film’s enormous success, it currently holds the following U.S./Canadian box office records:

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#2 - Lou Lumenick, New York Post#2 - Josh Horowitz, MTV#3 - Col Needham, IMDB#4 Empire#4 Mike Scott, The Times-Picayune#5 Amy Biancolli, Houston Chronicle#5 Jaime N. Christley, Slant#5 TV Guide#7 Moviefone#7 Mike Giuliano, Baltimore Sun#8 Gregory Ellwood, HitFix#9 Ray Greene, Boxoffice Magazine#10 Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

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Transformers: Dark of the Moon is a 2011 American science fiction action film based on the Transformers toy line. First released on June 23, 2011, it is the third installment of the live-action Transformers film series.

Like its predecessors, Transformers and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Transformers: Dark of the Moon is directed by Michael Bay and produced by Steven Spielberg. The film’s story is set three years after the events of the second film, with the Autobots,

during their collaboration with the NEST (Networked Elements: Supporters and Transformers) military force, discovering a hidden alien technology in possession of humans, which had been found by Apollo 11 on the Moon 42 years prior. Meanwhile, the Decepticons unveil a plan to use said technology to enslave Humanity in order to save the home planet of the Transformers, Cybertron.

Cast

Shia LaBeouf, Josh Duhamel, Tyrese Gibson,

and John Turturro reprised their starring roles, with Peter Cullen and Hugo Weaving returning as the voices of Optimus Prime and Megatron, and Kevin Dunn and Julie White reprising their roles as the parents of the main protagonist, Sam Witwicky.

English model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley replaced Megan Fox as the lead female character; the cast also saw the additions of Patrick Dempsey, John Malkovich, Ken Jeong, and Frances McDormand. As well with

Action / Adventure / Sci FiShia LaBeouf, Rosie Huntington-WhiteleyDirector: Michael Bay

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Transformers: Dark of the Moon

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Leonard Nimoy, Keith Szarabajka, Ron Bottitta, John DiMaggio, George Coe, Francesco Quinn, James Remar, and Greg Berg who joined the film’s voice cast. The script was written by Ehren Kruger, who also collaborated on the narrative of the second film of the series. Bay stated this would be his last installment in the series.

Dark of the Moon was shot with both regular 35mm film cameras and specially developed 3-D cameras, with filming locations including

Indiana, Washington, D.C., Moscow, Florida, and Chicago. The film was rendered specifically for 3-D, and the visual effects involved more complex robots which took longer to render.

Story

Unlike the two previous Transformers installments, which were based solely on the script writers’ endemic story, Transformers: Dark of the Moon was based on a novel called Transformers: Ghosts of Yesterday, written by Alan Dean

Foster. The novel is a prequel to the 2007 film Transformers. It follows the same story structure as Dark of the Moon, being set in 1969, the year of Apollo 11. The story structure differs slightly, though, because the novel was written merely as prequel to the first film.

Cast

• Shia LaBeouf as Sam Witwicky, a recent college graduate who is once again tied to the fate of Earth’s survival.• Rosie Huntington-Whiteley as Carly Spencer,

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• Tyrese Gibson as USAF Chief Robert Epps, former NEST major • Josh Duhamel as Lt. Colonel William Lennox.• John Turturro as Seymour Simmons, Patrick Dempsey as Dylan Gould, a wealthy car collector who is secretly in cahoots with Megatron.• Kevin Dunn as Ron Witwicky, Sam’s father.• Julie White as Judy Witwicky, Sam’s mother.• John Malkovich as Bruce Brazos,• Frances McDormand as Charlotte Mearing, • Lester Speight as “Hardcore” Eddie, a

former member of NEST.• Ken Jeong as Jerry “Deep” Wang, a paranoid software programmer at Sam’s work.• Glenn Morshower as General Morshower, leader of NEST.Buzz Aldrin appears as himself, meeting Optimus Prime at the NEST headquarters.

Transformers

• Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots and keeper of the Matrix of Leadership.• Hugo Weaving as Megatron, leader of the

Decepticons, who is still badly wounded from the final battle of Revenge of the Fallen.• Leonard Nimoy as Sentinel Prime, Optimus Prime’s predecessor as the leader of the Autobots who transforms into a red and black Rosenbauer Panther Fire Truck. He was also a mentor to Optimus.• Jess Harnell as Ironhide, the Autobots’ cantankerous weapons specialist.• Charlie Adler as Starscream, Megatron’s second-in-command.

Effects

On the last weekend of ILM’s work on Dark of the Moon, the company’s entire render farm was being used for the film, giving ILM more than 200,000 hours of rendering power a day—or equivalent to 22.8 years of rendering time in a 24-hour period.[10] Farrar embraced the detail in creating giant robots for 3-D, making sure that in close-ups of the Transformers’ faces “you see all the details in the nooks and crannies of these pieces. It’s totally

unlike a plain surface subject like a human head or an animated head.” The supervisor said that Bay’s style of cinematography helped integrate the robots into the scenes, as “Michael is keen on having foreground/midground/background depth in his shots, even in normal live-action shots.

The most complicated effects involved the “Driller”, a giant snake-like creature with an eel-like body and spinning rotator blades, knives and teeth. In Revenge of the Fallen, it took 72 hours per frame

to fully render Devastator for the IMAX format, which is approximately a frame amount of 4,000. For the Driller, which required the entire render farm, it was up to 122 hours per frame.[63] The most complex scene involved the Driller destroying a computer-generated skyscraper, which took 288 hours per frame.

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Reception

The film has received mixed to negative reviews from film critics. While many of them believed it was an improvement over Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and were also praising the film’s visual effects and 3-D action sequences, criticism fell over the long running time, the below average acting, and the script. Several critics also felt that Dark of the Moon still did not live up to the first Transformers movie. Film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gave

Transformers: Dark of the Moon a score of 35% and a rating average of 4.9/10, saying, “Its special effects and 3-D shots are undeniably impressive, but they aren’t enough to fill up its loud, bloated running time, or mask its thin, indifferent script.”Metacritic, another review aggregator, gave the film a Metascore of 42/100. Box Office

Transformers: Dark of the Moon grossed $352,390,543 in North America, and

$771,356,453 in other territories, for a worldwide total of $1,123,746,996. It is the highest-grossing film of the franchise. It is also the second highest-grossing film of 2011 worldwide, behind Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2. On its first weekend worldwide, the film made $382.4 million, marking the third-largest opening of all timem It has made the second-largest worldwide debut at IMAX venues, with $23.1 million.

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The Hangover Part II is a 2011 American comedy film produced by Legendary Pictures and distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, and a sequel to 2009’s The Hangover. Todd Phillips directed the film in addition to co-authoring the script with Craig Mazin, and Scott Armstrong.

Synopsis

The film stars Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis and Justin Bartha. The Hangover Part II tells the story of

Phil, Stu, Alan, and Doug as they travel to Thailand for Stu’s wedding. After the bachelor party in Las Vegas, Stu takes no chances and opts for a safe, subdued pre-wedding brunch. However, things do not go as planned, resulting in another bad hangover with no memories of the previous night.

Development of The Hangover Part II began in April 2009, two months before The Hangover was released. The principal actors were cast in March 2010 to reprise

their roles from the first film. Production began in October 2010, in Ontario, California, before moving on location in Thailand. The film was released on May 26, 2011 and, despite receiving negative reviews from critics, became the highest-grossing R-rated comedy of all time.

ComedyBradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis, Ed HelmsDirector: Todd Phillips

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The Hangover: Part II

• Bradley Cooper as Phil Wenneck• Ed Helms as Dr. Stuart “Stu” Price• Zach Galifianakis as Alan Garner• Justin Bartha as Doug Billings• Ken Jeong as Leslie Chow• Jeffrey Tambor as Sid Garner• Jamie Chung as Lauren, Stu’s fiancée• Bryan Callen as Samir, a smarmy strip club owner in Bangkok• Mason Lee as Teddy, Lauren’s brother• Paul Giamatti as Kingsley, an undercover Interpol agent• Sasha Barrese as Tracy Billings, Doug’s wife• Gillian Vigman as Stephanie Wenneck, Phil’s wife• Yasmin Lee as Kimmy• Nirut Sirijanya as Lauren’s father

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Cast Box Office

The Hangover Part II has grossed $254,464,305 in the US and Canada, and $327,000,000 elsewhere, for a worldwide gross of $581,464,305. On its opening weekend, it earned $177.8 million, which was the highest-grossing worldwide opening for a comedy film, taking the record from The Simpsons Movie ($170.9 million). On the weekend of June 17–19, 2011, it out-grossed its predecessor in worldwide earnings to become the highest-grossing R-rated comedy of all time.

The Hangover Part II received mostly negative reviews from critics. The review aggregator, Rotten Tomatoes, gives the film a score of 35% based on 221 reviews from critics with a rating average of 5.0 out of 10. The website’s critical consensus is that the film is “a crueler, darker, raunchier carbon copy of the first installment” and “lacks the element of surprise – and most of the joy – that helped make the original a hit.”

Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, gives the film a score of 44 based on 40 reviews.[65] CinemaScore polls reported that the average grade moviegoers gave the film was a A- on an A+ to F scale.

Andrew Barker of Variety gave the film a negative review, stating, “The stock dismissal ‘more of the same’ has rarely been more accurately applied to a sequel than to The Hangover Part II, which ranks as little more than a faded copy of its predecessor superimposed on a more brightly colored background”.

Christy Lemire of the Associated Press said, “Giving the people what they want is one thing. Making nearly the exact same movie a second time, but shifting the setting to Thailand, is just ... what, lazy? Arrogant? Maybe a combination of the two”.

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times also gave the film an

average review stating, “The Hangover Part II plays like a challenge to the audience’s capacity for raunchiness. It gets laughs, but some of them are in disbelief”.

Conversely, Michael Rechtshaffen of The Hollywood Reporter gave The Hangover Part II a positive review remarking, “What happens in Bangkok isn’t as much fun as when it happened in Vegas, but it’s still worth the trip”.

Lou Lumenick of the New York Post said, “There are definitely laughs to be had, even if the three leads often seem to be going through the motions”.

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Reception

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Adventure / Comedy / Sci FiSimon Pegg, Nick Frost, Seth RogenDirector: Greg Mottola

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Paul

Paul is a 2011 science fiction comedy film directed by Greg Mottola, written by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. It stars Pegg, Frost, and the voice of Seth Rogen as the title character. The film contains numerous references to other science fiction films, especially those of Steven Spielberg, as well as to general science fiction fandom.

In an interview for the DVD release of Paul, Pegg and Frost made the film to demonstrate their love for Steven Spielberg’s films

Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, as well as their favorite science fiction films.

After they mentioned the project to Spielberg, he suggested he might make a cameo appearance, and a scene was added to include him as a voice on a speakerphone in 1980 discussing ideas with Paul for his soon to become box office hit E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. According to Robert Kirkman, he, along with Invincible co-creator Cory Walker and current

Invincible artist Ryan Ottley, had a cameo in the film as The Big Guy’s henchmen.

Box Office

In North America, Paul opened in March 2011 at #5, with $13,043,310 behind Limitless, Rango, Battle: Los Angeles, and The Lincoln Lawyer. The film closed after 63 days in theaters, grossing $37,412,945 domestically, just below its $40 million budget. With the international $57 million gross, the film is considered a success.

The premise for Paul came from Pegg and Frost in 2003, while they were filming Shaun of the Dead.To help with the script, Pegg and Frost went on their own road trip across America and used ideas from it to add to the script.According to Mottola, the film was given the green-light shortly before the late-2000s recession; if had been delayed, “they probably wouldn’t have made the movie.” The budget for the film was around $40 million.

After obtaining permission to use the Comic-Con

brand, the settings had to be changed to avoid crowds, and extras were used to portray attendees since there had been some issues regarding filming inside San Diego’s actual convention center.

During filming, Joe Lo Truglio was a stand-in for the character Paul, the only character who was created by CGI. Seth Rogen did some motion capture in pre-production and voice work during post-production.

Numerous scenes throughout the film deal

with the controversy of Darwin and Evolution vs. Religion and Creationism, with the character of Paul the alien being the proverbial ‘fly-in-the-ointment’ of conservative Judeo/Christian/Islamic doctrine. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, who are atheists, have alluded in BBC Radio interviews they had wished to delve deeper into the controversy but cut several scenes short in favor of flow and timing on film.

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• Simon Pegg as Graeme Willy• Nick Frost as Clive Gollings• Jason Bateman as Special Agent Lorenzo Zoil. Bateman described his character as an “exaggerated nasty guy”. Bateman also stated he based Zoil on Yaphet Kotto in Midnight Run and Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive.• Kristen Wiig as Ruth Buggs• Bill Hader as Agent Haggard• Blythe Danner as Tara Walton• Joe Lo Truglio as Agent

O’Reilly• John Carroll Lynch as Moses Buggs, Ruth’s father• Jane Lynch as Pat Stevenson• David Koechner as Gus, a hilbilly Graeme and Clive first encounter in a Nevada gas station.• Jesse Plemons as Jake, Gus’s friend.• Sigourney Weaver as “The Big Guy”. Weaver described the role as “a dream come true”. In an interview with Graham Norton, Weaver stated: ‘It’s a love letter to sci-fi fans. I jumped at the chance to be in it. To

find a comedy that also pays homage to sci-fi is a dream come true’.• Seth Rogen as Paul (voice)• Jeffrey Tambor as Adam Shadowchild, a famous science fiction writer

As of September 2011, the film has received generally positive reviews;

Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 72% based on 184 reviews, with an average rating of 6.3 out of 10; it fared less well among 36 of that website’s “top critics”, scoring a 58% (21 fresh reviews and 15 rotten).

Empire rated the film “excellent” (four stars out of five) stating, “Broader and more accessible than either Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz, Paul is pure Pegg and Frost – clever,

cheeky and very, very funny. You’ll never look at E.T. in the same way again.”

SFX also gives the film four stars out of five, saying “the film veers dangerously close to alienating (no pun intended) all but its geek core audience, [though] the more obvious concessions to a mainstream crowd [are] never enough to derail the film’s laugh-a-minute ride”;

SFX also calls it a “triumph of visual

effects, convincing characterisation and bad taste humour.”

Peter Bradshaw gave the film two stars out of five and called it a “goofy, amiable piece of silliness” exhibiting “self-indulgence” and possessing a “distinct shortage of real gags”

On the same scale Nigel Andrews gave the film only one star, calling it a “faltering extraterrestrial knockabout”.

The Independent grades the film two stars out

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Reception

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of five, saying “Pegg is likeable as usual, Frost more doltish than usual, and Kristen Wiig an appealing convert from Bible thumper to ladette”, and notes that “from time to time, clever ideas rear their heads – like the idea that ‘Paul’ has been the brains behind all science fiction and UFO initiatives for the last 30 years, including Close Encounters and The X-Files – but they soon return to the film’s default setting of laddish japes and a conviction that the word ‘cocksucker’ will always get a laugh.”

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Mystery / Sci Fi / ThrillerElle Fanning, Amanda Michalka, Kyle ChandlerDirector: J.J. Abrams

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Super 8

Super 8 is a 2011 American science fiction action thriller film written and directed by J. J. Abrams and produced by Steven Spielberg. The film stars Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning, and Kyle Chandler and was released on June 10, 2011 in conventional and IMAX theaters in the US.

The film tells the story of a group of young teenagers who are filming their own Super 8 movie in a small town in 1979 when a train derails, releasing a dangerous presence into their town. The movie was

filmed in Weirton, West Virginia and surrounding areas.

Abrams and Spielberg collaborated in a storytelling committee to come up with the story for the film. The film was initially reported to be either a sequel or prequel to the 2008 film Cloverfield, but this was quickly denied by Abrams. Primary photography began in fall 2010.

To promote the film, Valve Corporation created a short video game segment and released it alongside

the PC and Mac versions of Portal 2.

Abrams’ original plan was to film all of the sequences for the film-within-a-film “The Case” in Super-8 using Pro8mm stock and cameras. However, this approach proved unsuccessful, as visual effects house Industrial Light and Magic found it impossible to integrate CGI into the footage due to the format’s graininess. For sequences involving CGI, cinematographer Larry Fong used Super-16 instead.

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Viral marketing

Like Cloverfield, an earlier J. J. Abrams-produced film, Super 8 was promoted through an extensive viral marketing campaign. The first trailer for the movie was attached to Iron Man 2, released in May 2010. The trailer gave the premise of a section of Area 51 being closed down in 1979 and its contents being transported by freight train to Ohio. A pickup truck drives into the oncoming train, derailing it, and one of the carriages is smashed open while a

Super 8 camera films. Fans analyzing the trailer found a hidden message, “Scariest Thing I Ever Saw”, contained in the final frames of the trailer. This led to a website, Scariest Thing I Ever Saw, which simulated the interface of a PDP-11 and contained various clues to the film’s storyline; the computer was eventually revealed to belong to Josh Woodward, the son of Dr. Woodward, who is trying to find out what happened to his father. Another viral website,

Rocket Poppeteers was also found, which plays no direct part in the film but is indirectly related. The Super 8 website also contained an “editing room” section, which asked users to find various clips from around the web and piece them together. When completed, the reel makes up the film found by the kids in Dr. Woodward’s trailer.

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Cast

• Joel Courtney• Elle Fanning• Kyle Chandler as Jackson “Jack” Lamb• Ron Eldard as Louis Dainard• Riley Griffiths as Charles Kaznyk• Ryan Lee as Cary• Zach Mills as Preston• Gabriel Basso as Martin• Noah Emmerich as Colonel Nelec• Bruce Greenwood as Cooper[5]• Amanda Michalka as Jen Kaznyk• Michael Hitchcock as Deputy Rosko• Caitriona Balfe as Elizabeth Lamb• Joel McKinnon Miller as Mr. Kaznyk• Jessica Tuck as Mrs. Kaznyk• David Gallagher as Donny• Glynn Turman as Dr. Thomas Woodward• Dan Castellaneta as Izzy• Richard T. Jones as Overmyer

Box Office

Super 8 had a production budget of $50 million. It was commercially released on June 10, 2011. In the United States and Canada, it opened in 3,379 theaters and grossed over $35.4 million on its opening weekend, ranking first at the box office. The film grossed $127 million in North America with a worldwide total of some $260 million.

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Critical Response

Super 8 received positive reviews from professional critics. On movie review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film received a score of 82%, and a rating average of 7.4/10, Metacritic assigned the film a Metascore of 72 based on 40 critics.

Chris Sosa of Gather gave the film an A rating, calling it, “a gripping and exciting tale of finding one’s place in the world amidst tragedy.” Roger Ebert gave the film 3½ stars out

of 4 and said, “Super 8 is a wonderful film, nostalgia not for a time but for a style of filmmaking, when shell-shocked young audiences were told a story and not pounded over the head with aggressive action. Abrams treats early adolescence with tenderness and affection.” Richard Corliss named it one of the Top 10 Best Movies of 2011.

Jamie Graham of Total Film gave the film a perfect five-star rating, saying, “like Spielberg,

Abrams has an eye for awe, his deft orchestration of indelible images – a tank trundling through a children’s playground, a plot-pivotal landmark framed in the distance through a small hole in a bedroom wall – marking him as a born storyteller”.

Most of the film’s negative reviews commented negatively on the film’s ending and its frequent homages to the early films of Steven Spielberg.

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Action / Adventure / Sci Fi / ThrillerJames McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer LawrenceDirector: Matthew Vaughn

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X-Men: First Class

X-Men: First Class is a 2011 American superhero film by Matthew Vaughn and produced by Bryan Singer, based on the X-Men characters appearing in Marvel Comics. The fifth installment in the X-Men series, the film acts as a prequel for the X-Men trilogy, being set primarily in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It focuses on the relationship between Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr and the origin of their groups, the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Mutants. The film stars

James McAvoy as Xavier and Michael Fassbender as Lensherr. Other cast members include Kevin Bacon, January Jones, Rose Byrne, Jennifer Lawrence, Zoë Kravitz, Nicholas Hoult and Lucas Till.Announced as early as 2006, First Class entered its production on August 2010, being finished just three weeks before its premiere on June 2011. Locations included Oxford, the Mojave desert and Georgia, with soundstage work in both Pinewood Studios and the 20th Century Fox

stages in Los Angeles. The film received positive reviews, praising the writing and acting and considering First Class a fresh new beginning for the franchise, and was a box-office success with earnings of $353 million worldwide.

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Box Office

In North America, the film opened on approximately 6,900 screens at 3,641 locations, debuting atop the weekend box office with earnings of $55.1 million across the three days, including $3.37 million at its Friday midnight launch.This opening was much lower than the opening weekends of X-Men: The Last Stand ($102.7 million), X2: X-Men United ($85.5 million), and X-Men Origins: Wolverine ($85.0 million), but it was slightly higher than the original

film ($54.5 million). First Class also opened 8,900 locations in 74 overseas markets, which brought in $61 million during the weekend - standing third in the overseas ranking behind Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and The Hangover Part II.

The film opened atop the box office in twenty countries, with the biggest grosses being in the United Kingdom ($9 million, including previews), France ($7.1 million), Mexico ($5 million), South Korea ($5.4

million ) and Australia ($5.1 million). In its second weekend X-Men: First Class dropped 56.2%, the second smallest second weekend drop in the franchise behind X-2: X-Men United (53.2%), and came in with an estimated $24.1 million, in second place to Super 8.Overseas, it raised to number two with $42.2 million. The film grossed $146,408,305 in the United States and Canada as well as $207,215,819 internationally, bringing its worldwide total to $353,624,124.

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Filming & effects

Vaughn said he shot the film in anamorphic “to create a widescreen experience, which is emblematic of ‘60s movies, such as the James Bond films”. Visual effects supervisor Matt Johnson added that for the lighting of the digital interior of Cerebro, “keeping with the ‘60s vibe, we put in some old school elements such as lens flare and chromatic aberration and edge fringing.”[17] The aesthetics of the decade were also invoked by

designers Simon Clowes and Kyle Cooper of Prologue Films, who were responsible for the end credits and tried to do something that “could be done with traditional optical”. The credits animation depicts DNA strands through simple geometric shapes, drawing inspiration from both Saul Bass and Maurice Binder’s work in the Bond films.

Critical response

The film has received strongly positive reviews, with the review aggregator

website Rotten Tomatoes showing 87% freshness and a rating of 7.4/10 from 231 reviews counted as of November 15, 2011, the consensus being “With a strong script, stylish direction, and powerful performances from its well-rounded cast, X-Men: First Class is a welcome return to form for the franchise.”[75] On Metacritic, the film received 65 out of 100 based on 37 reviews.