The X-Men franchise which, with the inclusion of X-Men: First Class, now boasts five films, started off well with Bryan Singer’s series-launching entries X-Men (2000) and X2 (2003). Then faltered, at least creatively as the box office didn’t seem to suffer, with the third film in the series, X-Men: The Last Stand (2006), and the franchise’s first spin-off, X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009). Now, the series is finally back on solid footing with its latest offering, a reboot of sorts – X-Men: First Class. In what is beginning to look like the summer of the superhero film (remember, still to come are Green Lantern and Captain America: The First Avenger), it is with a big, stupid fanboy grin that I report X-Men: First Class builds on the momentum established by the season’s first successful superhero, Thor, and delivers another solid, entertaining, and thoroughly satisfying comic book movie.
X-Men: First Class begins exactly as Singer’s X-Men (2000) did, in occupied Poland in 1944. There we are introduced to young Erik Lehnsherr (Bill Milner) as he is separated from his parents by the Nazis. Erik is then handed over to scientist Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), whose sadistic behavior towards Erik will ultimately shape his future persona as Magneto. Meanwhile, a young Charles Xavier (Laurence Belcher) is living a seemingly idyllic life in his family mansion (although the conspicuous absence of his parents suggests his childhood is not going as smoothly as he would hope either). The film then jumps to 1962, where Charles (now played with a profound sense of righteousness by James McAvoy) is graduating from Oxford University after publishing a thesis on mutation. This brings him to the attention of CIA agent Moira MacTaggart (Rose Byrne) who, after a harrowing run-in with the apparently forever youthful Shaw and his mutant cohorts Emma Frost (January Jones), Riptide (Álex González), and Azazel (Jason Flemyng), is looking to bring an expert on mutation into the fold. At the same time, Erik (now played with gutsy bravado by Michael Fassbender) is hunting down and killing former Nazis hell bent on murdering Shaw. Of course the CIA is initially frightened of the potential power of the newly identified mutants, but one CIA higher up (Oliver Platt) sees their potential and wants to create a team of mutants to serve the CIA. After Erik and Charles meet and agree to take down Shaw together, the begin recruiting mutants to form the first class of X-Men. These include, in no particular order: Charles Xavier’s longtime friend Raven (aka Mystique – played by Jennifer Lawrence), Angel (Zoë Kravitz), Banshee (Caleb Landry Jones), Darwin (Edi Gathegi), Havok (Lucas Till), and CIA scientist Beast (Nicholas Hoult). The team then sets out to stop Shaw’s nefarious plans to bring about mutant domination via the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Despite what may seem like a confusing and frighteningly comic-book nerd-friendly plot, X-Men: First Class is an absolute blast. The cast is excellent and are completely at ease with their superhero personas (Fassbender and Bacon are particular standouts). Director Matthew Vaughn keeps things moving at such a brisk and entertaining pace that you’ll easily forget that you’re essentially watching the first film all over again. While on first glance, X-Men: First Class may seem like a prequel to the other films in the franchise (apart from the Wolverine film, of course, which just bounces all over the place), the new film really plays more like a reboot of the X-Men franchise. After all, those first couple films were made over a decade ago. They’re already doing reboots of the Spider-Man franchise and it worked out pretty well for Batman, so why not the X-Men too?
Now if you insist on forcing First Class into the existing X-Men time line, you may find enough conundrums and continuity problems between it and the other films in the series (even if you assume that the third and fourth films never happened – believe me, a lot of us do) to make you wish you had Magneto’s helmet to block them all. That’s where the whole logic of looking at the film as a reboot comes in. A friend of mine pointed out that we’ve already seen the top characters the comic has to offer and that First Class may have been just a little desperate for mutants when it put fringe characters like Darwin center stage. But, that’s only true if you try to place First Class within the context of the other films. That’s not to say you can’t include them as part of the series, there are enough nods to earlier films to easily accomplish that (a couple of excellent cameos that I won’t spoil here go a long way towards that). But, then you have to accept that all mutants age much more slowly than regular humans (okay, that could work) and that their memories are also a bit shoddy (like when Xavier says in X-Men that he and Magneto built Cerebro and in First Class it’s stated that Henry McCoy (aka Beast) built it and, if you factor in the actual storyline from the comics, it gets even more confusing). But that’s not the point is it?
No matter what, there will be something for devoted fans to argue about or justify. But, in the end, all that matters is X-Men: First Class is a flat out damn entertaining film. It’s a great superhero movie period, as well as a fitting reboot for such a fantastic property as the X-Men.
An independent filmmaker, co-writer and director of over a dozen short films, the Editor in Chief of CinemaNerdz.com has spent much of the last three decades as a writer and editor specializing in biographical and critical reference sources in literature and the cinema, beginning in February 1991 reviewing films for his college newspaper. He was a member of the Detroit Film Critics Society, as well as the group's webmaster and one-time President for over a decade until the group ceased to exist. His contributions to film criticism can be found in Magill's Cinema Annual, VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever (of which he was the editor for nearly a decade until it too ceased to exist), the International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, and the St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia (on which he collaborated with editor Andrew Sarris). He has also appeared on the television program Critic LEE Speaking alongside Lee Thomas of FOX2 and Adam Graham, of The Detroit News. He currently lives in the Detroit area with his wife and their dogs.
