X-Men First Class: Movie Review

Back in the early 1990s, I found a cartoon on the Fox Channel on Saturday mornings. X-Men: The Animated Series. It had caught my attention mainly because a decade earlier, I watched Spider-man and his Amazing Friends which occasionally featured the X-Men. Right from the start, I found myself hooked and dearly loving the cartoon. At this time in my life, I had already given up most comic books, except for the occasional Ninja Turtles comic by Archie. Though, with this new cartoon, I found a new addiction to comic books. I began heavily collecting the X-Men comics and other memorabilia.

In the summer of 2000, the superhero movie genre was kicked off for the new millennium with the X-Men movie. I was completely enthralled with the movie, even though one could tell it was rushed and some of the casting seemed off. It didn’t matter. My excitement at that time outweighed all of the negative criticisms I had for the film. After later viewings, my criticisms started to spring forth as I realized the flaws, though it still doesn’t keep me from enjoying the movie.  Then in 2003, the sequel hit theaters. Again, I was filled with excitement watching this movie. I even teared up a bit at the end, seeing the beginning of one of my favorite storylines emerge, the Phoenix Saga. I knew it couldn’t follow the way of the comic book, but I was okay with that. I understood it couldn’t take a space turn and that Bryan Singer was telling it the best way he could. It worked well.

Unfortunately, in 2006, the third X-Men movie came to the big screen. This time, my excitement was at a dull roar. Right from the beginning, the movie got off to a bad start. Though, being the dedicated X-Men fan, I continued to support the movie franchise. However, my support quickly ended with the Wolverine movie. I found that movie to be quite the atrocity towards the end. I enjoyed the beginning greatly, and I enjoyed the cast of the movie. Yet something fell through and just made the movie not work. It became the first of the X-Men movies I didn’t see more than once in theaters and didn’t pick up the DVD when it was released to stores.

When X-Men: First Class was brought up, I cringed slightly. To me, the first class of X-Men will always be Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Beast, Angel, and Iceman. Though, with the movie franchise, this became impossible as this particular movie was to be set in the 1960s during the Cuban Missile Crisis while the previous films were set in the “not too distant future.” Already it had one strike against it.

Then, the positives started coming in. The movie was to be directed by Matthew Vaughn, the director of KickAss and the original director for the third X-Men movie. Bryan Singer was back on the movie as a writer and producer, now he could tell some of the back story he had originally planned for these characters he brought to the big screen for us. And then, Michael Fassbender was cast as Magneto. At this moment, I was sold on the movie. Since seeing Inglorious Basterds, I have been a follower of Fassbender’s movies. I find him a wonderful actor, capable of many roles.

Most of the other actors cast I wasn’t fully aware of, aside from Kevin Bacon, which had me questioning the movie again. As the list of mutants who were to be in the movie grew, my questions were again beginning to rise.

When the trailers began coming out, I mainly stayed on the fence. The look of the trailers at times seemed cheesy, the posters had no flare to them, and the costumes seemed more comic bookish than most other superhero movies. I was never instilled with a full sense of confidence in this movie.

I didn’t get the chance to see this opening day, as I had hoped. Instead, I waited days, letting my anticipation build. I have been hearing so many glowing reviews for the movie from other online critics and from friends. When I got the chance to watch it, I sat mesmerized for over two hours. It didn’t matter that the cast of mutants, aside from Beast, were not part of the original first class. It didn’t matter that I felt some of the casting was off. It didn’t matter if the costumes seemed a bit hokey. This movie took all of the bad I thought may reside in it, and turned it into amazing.

The writers and director took this movie back to the heart of what the X-Men is all about, societal outcasts trying to live their lives like normal people. We’re brought back to the early stages of the X-men, beginning in the 1940s. As we saw in the original X-Men movie, young Erik (Magneto) is a boy being lead through a concentration camp and pulled away from his family. He struggles to get back to his family’s arms against the Nazi soldiers as his powers first emerge. The scene is nearly shot for shot in the opening of X-Men. This actually intrigued me, seeing how much they were going to stick with the original storyline ideas of the movies.

The cast of the film worked better overall, with a couple of exceptions. I have never been sold on casting Kevin Bacon as Sebastian Shaw, the Black King of the Hellfire Club. He just didn’t seem to be the oppressive, over-bearing man that Shaw is known to portray in the comics and to me, Kevin Bacon plays a better good guy than bad guy.

The other actor I never found completely believable was January Jones as Emma Frost, the White Queen of the Hellfire Club. Her acting abilities never seemed to lend cred to Emma’s ability to manipulate others even when she doesn’t use her telepathic abilities. I fear that her casting was dictated more on how good she would look in the normal Hellfire Club lingerie than how conniving Emma Frost truly can be. Though I’m not even sure her looks were worth it, either.

Though the main cast of heroes, I believe, was excellently portrayed on screen. James McAvoy did an outstanding job as Charles Xavier, leading one to believe he could be a younger Patrick Stewart. Jennifer Lawrence also did an outstanding job as Raven, aka Mystique, a young girl confused by how she should feel about her own mutation. While they took the role of Mystique in a brand new direction, they told the direction in such a way that it worked very well for the story and made it even more heartbreaking for her, lending more respect for the Mystique character than any of the other films could ever give her. Nicholas Hoult played Hank McCoy, aka Beast, to exceptional levels. His story was told fairly accurately to the comic origins.

Final cast member I want to mention is Michael Fassbender. As I said earlier, I have been following his work more recently, catching good and bad movies. This is perhaps one of the better roles I’ve seen him play. The torment he portrays for the young Magneto is superb, letting you see the fall of Erik and rise of Magneto happen throughout the movie with facial expressions alone. To me, it isn’t just how someone delivers a line, but also how they show the line and the emotions meant to come from that line of dialogue. Tormented, happy, angry, serene, Fassbender can easily portray these emotions for all characters he has played.

While this is a movie about individuals with superhuman powers, the effects were not all that amazing compared to other superhero movies. Though I enjoyed not seeing a CGI character for Beast, the special effects make-up for his post-transformation appearance had difficulty in keeping up with his words. That was one of the major irks I had, and that isn’t even that much of a major irk. The other major irk was the look of Emma Frost in her diamond form. This is a difficult look to master, though it appeared better in the Wolverine movie than this particular movie.

Overall, this movie is an excellent addition to the X-Men franchise, in fact, I would go so far as to say it is the best of the five movies. Though, this particular movie seems to erase some of what was done in X-Men 3 and Wolverine (not something I have a problem with). I did enjoy the few cameos that popped up throughout the film and I’m curious as to where they go next with this franchise.

This is certainly a movie I will be picking up on DVD or Blu-Ray later.