X-Men: First Class

X-Men: First Class

I have mixed feelings about the X-Men movie franchise.  Maybe I was just picky because the X-Men were my favorite comic team when I was growing up.  And while I felt Bryan Singer did a fairly good job with the first two X-Men movies, they never truly soared like say Spiderman 2 or The Dark Knight.  They were just two really solid comic films.  And then the third movie came out, a horrid, ill-conceived mess, and I became very worried about the direction of the franchise.  When they announced First Class, I was wary.  I did not think going back to do a prequel was a very good idea.  I wanted the studio to fix the mess they had made with Wolverine, Rogue, and Storm.  I didn't want to go back and see why Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr became Professor X and Magneto.

But the studio was smart, bringing a crew together that wouldn't hack a movie together.  Matthew Vaughn (Kick Ass) was a fine choice as director, with a fun style and strong visual flair that generally enhances his storytelling instead of distracts from it.  Vaughn went on to assemble a remarkable cast, including James McAvoy (Atonement), Kevin Bacon (Footloose), Rose Byrne (Troy), January Jones (Mad Men), rising star Jennifer Lawrence (The Hunger Games), and my favorite up-and-coming actor Michael Fassbender (Prometheus).  Together, they really put together a stylish and fun flick.

During the height of the Cold War, Erik Lehnsherr (Fassbender) is a Holocaust survivor, traveling the world and using his mutant abilities to control metal to hunt and kill escaped Nazi war criminals.  His primary target is Sebastian Shaw (Bacon), the German scientist who killed Erik's mother and performed horrible experiments on the boy in his concentration camp laboratory.  But Erik is not the only one seeking out Shaw.  Special agent Moira MacTaggart (Byrne) suspects Shaw is playing the USSR and the US against each other in an attempt to jumpstart World War 3.  Once she discovers she is dealing with mutants, she asks for help from the world's foremost mutant expert, telepath Charles Xavier (McAvoy).  The stage is set.  Let super heroics ensue! 

There is a lot to like here, but what I like the most is that the film really gets to the heart of what the X-Men are all about – how can the world deal with the existence of mutants?  Vaughn and Company touch on with some of the smarter issues from the comic, such as the debate of assimilation vs. segregation.  Some mutants can “pass” as normal; some look too bizarre to ever really join the rest of humankind.  I also like how they play off Xavier and Erik's opposing philosophies.  Xavier is a man of peace and acceptance.  He fights for a world where mutant and man can live in peace and harmony.  To Erik, that is a load of crap.  He lived through the Holocaust and he knows the horrors that mankind is capable of, and he will not forgive them for that capability.  The X-Men were always an allegory for prejudice and discrimination, and First Class does a terrific job of making that struggle central to its story.  

Not that the film is all serious.  It still has fun.  Vaughn has created a cool retro vibe, successfully recreating the 1960s with a fun James Bond feel.  The sets have iconic Ken Adams' influence all over them.  And that is super cool.  The actors all put in terrific work, especially McAvoy, Bacon, and Fassbender.  I will say the movie is not perfect.  There are some things that keep it from achieving the greatness of the BEST comic movies...at times, I found the scenes with Xavier's young mutant recruits a bit superfluous.  The actors are all fine, but their scenes occasionally drag.  Besides, the heart and the meat of this movie are both firmly with Magneto and Xavier...the actual "First Class" is almost a distraction.

I also HATED the makeup for The Beast.  He looked like a giant blue Ewok.  I just couldn't take most scenes with him seriously because of this.  Kelsey Grammar's Beast makeup in the previous X-Men film was much better, and I was surprised to see these kind of effects taking a step backwards.

But these are small complaints, right?  Overall, the movie was really quite good and I definitely recommend it.  Not only did they make a smart and fun super hero movie.  They saved a franchise.

MVP: 
McAvoy is superb, so the choice is not as easy as I would have thought, but this is still Fassbender's movie.  He gets my MVP for playing Erik.  He puts in superb, conflicted work as a good man at heart who is understandably twisted into eventually becoming the villainous Magneto.  I like how seriously Fassbender embraced the conflicted nature of the character.  And while the rest of the movie is good, the first half hour features the best sequences of the film, by far – and I am referring to Erik's ruthless hunting down of Nazi criminals.  I seriously could have watched an entire film called Magneto: Nazi Hunter.  So that makes for a decisive MVP win for Fassbender. 

P.S. Between his performances in Inglourious Basterds and X-Men: First Class, it is clear that Fassbender should be the next James Bond.  Daniel Craig is terrific and I am in no rush for him to retire, but I hope Eon has their eye on Fassbender for taking the mantle when the time comes.

BEST LINE:

Xavier: We have it in us to be the better men.
Erik: We already are.

TRIVIA:
Once cast as Charles Xavier, James McAvoy immediately shaved his head...only to learn that the film intended to feature Xavier with a full head of hair.  For the first month of filming, he had to wear hair extensions.  Oops.