"X-Men First Class" Review

WARNING SOME SPOILERS!!!!!!!!!

It’s been five years since we’ve visited Charles and his school of gifted youngsters.  And, let’s be honest, after 2006’s “X-Men: The Last Stand” we needed a break.  Brian Singer and his team did an incredible job building a successful franchise, and topping their first x-men film with “X2”, the perfect sequel.  It took Ratner only one stab at his “X” film to tear down what Singer built upon.  Now, Mathew Vaughn, with the help of Singer, is trying his hand at the “X” franchise with “X-Men: First Class”. 

I’m not going to lie, I had high expectations for this film.  It even managed to make my top 5 most anticipated films of summer 2011 in the number two slot.  Also, I’m quite fond of Vaughn’s previous work, in particular “Layer Cake”, and rather enjoyed “Kick Ass” despite its plot holes.  Not to mention the fact that “First Class” has two of young Hollywood’s finest actors, Michael Fassbinder and James McAvoy, headlining this band of misfits.  On paper this film is a winning formula, Solid director + great talent + great mythology = good movie.  However, I might be alone on this one, but it just didn’t quite deliver on the promise of the premise.  Don’t get me wrong, this is a decent effort, but one of the major problems of a prequel is that it must follow and flow into an established mythology.  And, “First Class” attempts to do this, but it just seemed hurried to me.  It’s unfortunate, because you don’t want to leave a bunch of loose ends untidy, but it seems with a movie like this you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

One half of the story is really quite good.  The story focuses mostly on Erik Lenscher, aka Magneto’s, origin for the first act of the film.  We start off where the first X-men film did, with Magneto as a boy in a Nazi Concentration camp.  Soon we are introduced to Kevin Bacon, who dons an astonishingly good German accent, as a mutant named Sebastian Shaw.  Shaw, like Magneto, is dead set on a war between humans and the growing mutant population.  Sebastian is also responsible for the death of Lenscher’s family and ultimately creating the mutant we later call Magneto.   And, this is where the film gets interesting.  In a lot of ways “First Class” is this epic revenge tale following Magneto as he tracks down the man responsible for birthing all this rage and hate he carries inside him.  Fassbinder is truly excellent in this role; his emotions are raw and tangible on screen.  He does an amazing job of making the audience sympathize with his character, so much that we forget the evil that he will eventually bring down upon the human race.  Magneto’s character and story arc were so engrossing, I would have much-preferred two hours delving into his character than what we ended up with.  Unfortunately, the other characters in this film are far less interesting.  Although McAvoy is excellent as Xavier, he just doesn’t have the storied background to get me engaged in his character.  Charles seems to be a silver spooned prodigy, having everything handed to him, including his unique gifts.  The other characters in the film suffer from a lack of screen time as well.  Now this is a common problem when you have a large cast of characters, it’s hard to determine whom the audience will identify more with, and who should just fall by the wayside.  Mystique, played by Jenifer Lawrence, is fascinating, but feels overshadowed by her more interesting co-stars.  And, it’s not that she does a poor job, in fact I found her performance solid, it’s just that McAvoy and Fassbinder are simply that good. 

I think my biggest problem with “First Class” goes back to my issue that the story felt hurried.  That there wasn’t a lot of time to show these intricate relationships develop.  I just didn’t “buy” this friendship between the two opposing viewpoints.  This problem continues throughout the film.  The characters only seem to have known each other for the briefest of periods, but change “sides” and their minds so quickly that it just seemed forced.  Characters that are enemies for the entire film, then suddenly play nice together, as if united by their common interests, but just seconds before were willing to tear each other apart.  It’s simply just too convenient.  It’s as if the producers said, “Well we can’t have that, because in the other x-men film these two are supposed to be enemies, better think of some poor filmic device to cover out tracks.”

On another note the action pieces are decent, and they seem to have real consequences.  You do get a sense that while these people obtain extraordinary gifts; they still bleed like you and me.

Overall I think “First Class” was one of the better films I’ve seen this summer, but there really isn’t much competition out there.  I have a feeling that the public wants to see a good movie so badly, that an average one is a welcome relief.  My theory is, much like when “Source Code” hit theatres, there just wasn’t anything else out there that could compete.  “First Class” suffers from the same fate, there isn’t whole lot out there to give it a run for its money, so it stands as the best “Hollywood” film in theatres.  So without further delay I’m giving “X-Men: First Class” a 3 out of 5 atoms.