By Jason Haskins
X-Men: First Class is the newest X-Men movie since 2009's disastrous X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which also happened to be the worst since 2006's X-Men: The Last Stand. On a positive note, this movie is the best X-Men flick since X2: X-Men United, but is it related to any of these above-mentioned films? Well, kind of.
This film takes place in the sixties and chronicles how Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr met--and follows their transition to becoming Professor X and Magneto respectively. The film opens with Lehnsherr's (Michael Fassbender) heartbreaking Holocaust experience where his mutant powers of manipulating metal are found out at the expense of his mother's death by the hands of Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon).
Years later he is on a rampage, hoping to find and murder Shaw as revenge for the past, but Xavier (James McAvoy) intercepts. Xavier hopes to help hone Lehnsherr’s powers when he's commissioned to create a team of mutants as G-men to help. However, mutants aren't widely known about in this period and finding the right team leads them on a search. At the same time, a darker aura permeates the film, surrounding Lehnsherr's eventual journey towards being Xavier (and his team's) archenemy.
Based on the comic series by Jeff Parker, this is Marvel's way of revamping the franchise by combing the X-Men First Class comics and using a skipped script of X-Men Origins: Magneto. This brew actually worked very well. You can actually see a lot of those components used here as this feels more like a Magneto centered movie that explores the dark caverns of his distrust for humanity. What makes this flick so fun is the same reason that Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith was actually watchable: seeing the downfall of a character to the dark side. Though we know it’s coming, curiosity piques our interest.
The characters are all pretty awesome and they actual use different ones from the original canon. You won't see Scott Summers as Cyclops, but you do see his brother Alex (aka Havok) who has a similar ability (though if one does the math, it seems more feasible Alex is Scott’s father). Beast is part of the team and it's explained how he turned blue, which was cool. Also included is a young Banshee, who leads to some of the movie's funniest parts. Mystique, who appearance in the first three movies, is introduced here and played by Jennifer Lawrence (of Winter's Bone fame). She's part of the team and very pretty--I especially enjoyed seeing her interactions between Magneto- knowing she'd, of course, join his Brotherhood of Mutants in the future. Speaking of eye candy, January Jones of Mad Men is Emma Frost (aka the White Queen), who plays one of the bad guys alongside Kevin Bacon as Shaw. Bacon is tremendous in this movie--it's awesome to see him in something mainstream, yet he brings his all to the darkness of the role and is an incredibly force in the movie.
James McAvoy was quite good as Professor X. At various points you could almost see Patrick Stewart's characterization of him coming out of the woodwork a little bit, but this is a different continuity...which was a bit confusing for me at first since I thought this was more of a prequel than a reboot-sort of the thing altogether (Ed- the producers are actually somewhat tight-lipped as to whether this is a reboot or prequel. They claim both). The guy that steals the whole movie was Fassbender, who blew my mind completely. If the movie trailer made you excited to see this, you have no idea how good the movie actually is. He doesn't just bring great charisma and good looks, but his performance was very heartfelt and genuine. It'd be worthless not to say that I almost cried a few times in the movie especially near the end. He's one of those characters you relate with the most because of his holocaust-survivor status and his origin story is one of the best things in the entire Marvel universe.
Now, as much as there's a ton of action there's also a lot of drama. This movie is a little over two hours long as it's setting up the team and trying to set up a ton of groundwork before the inevitable showdown at the end, but if you bear with the dialogue and jumping around you're in for a treat. It's not like this isn't a typical summer movie--there's a lot of really cool and exciting action moments with really fantastic special effects (except for Beast's...which was awkward looking). The last scenes of the movie is really where the action reaches its peak and I think that people itching for some action relief will dig what the flick has to offer in that department. The development of Magneto and Xavier’s relationship combined with needing an action-packed finish comes at a cost though. The majority of the students (aka the actual fucking X-Men) were not developed as effectively, which didn't make it as strong as it could've been.
Matthew Vaughn (who's responsible for last year's Kick Ass and 2004's Layer Cake) was originally slated to direct X-Men: The Last Stand, but ditched it due to studio pressure and no say in the finished project. It's great to see the fruits of his labors really explored here and to see his hard work pay off. Originally I had heard that this movie was being fast tracked and that he was under a super tight schedule again with this one, but he actually made everything work wonderfully as he developed the principle characters well (save for some secondary characters, the actual goddamn X-men, who should've gotten more screen time) and brought a lot of his signature flair to the movie. This is a must for X-Men fans, of course, especially with all of the really cool cameos I won't spoil for you and the great balance of sense of humor and swift drama for others. I could definitely go for another one in the same vein, but one with a bigger emphasis on a weighted script.
© Jason Haskins, 2011
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