Film: X-Men First Class

Posted by Sarah Moran in Films | 0 comments

Words: Dan Barrett

X-Men: First Class is the most baggage-less baggage-filled film of 2011.

After destroying the goodwill audiences felt to the quite good X-Men film franchise with the release of X-Men 3, 20th Century Fox have should be applauded here for doing the right thing. Instead of simply wiping the slate clean and rebooting the entire franchise, they’ve taken the hard way out by relaunching the franchise in a new way while retaining the same continuity established in the prior three films. The result has a film that is fun, exciting, and way groovy, baby.

Director Matthew Vaughn has delivered an X-Men movie set not in the current era, but rather in the 60′s. Instead of looking at the well-worn relationships of Cyclops, Jean Gray, Wolverine, and the rest of the team, he sets his focus on the formation of the friendship between Charlies Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr – the men who will come to be known as Professor X and Magneto. Their belief systems, politics, and actions are examined closely in this film, laying the foundation for the ideological battleground fought through the three previous X-Men films.

It’s a curious film in that it takes its queues from the British films and TV shows of the 1960′s, incorporating themes and real-world political events that came to shape the United States. The genuine thrill of this film is not in the ideology and superheroics that underpin the narrative, but rather from visual look and tone of the film. It embraces it’s 60′s homage vibe and owns it completely. The costuming and sets all seem inspired from James Bond films, and TV shows like The Avengers, The Prisoner, and Department S. It’s a bold style to embrace for what should be an otherwise generic popcorn film and is significantly better for it.

One of the more appealing aspects of this fourth film was the introduction of an all-new cast. James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender are both very suave and charming as Professor X & Magneto, with Rose Byrne and Jennifer Lawrence both beyond dreamy as Maura McTaggart and Raven. Nicholous Hoult is the actor that really shines in the film. While his role as Hank “Beast” McCoy is secondary to the rest of the cast, he manages to steal every scene he is in. His character is the most openly emotionally vulnerable of the X-Men and Hoult owns McCoys honesty and pain.

Another strength of X-Men: First Class is the use of some great character actors filling the supporting roles. Kevin Bacon is great as the villain of the film, with Oliver Platt, Ray Wise, and Michael Ironside each filling out minor characters nicely.

While this film is a lot of fun, it does suffer in its third act as it says goodbye to the fun 60′s vibe that it had developed and moves more into a straight action adventure film as it seeks to work purely on the films thematic core. While it was fun to see the 1960′s X-Men comic book costumes come to life, it does feel like the film changes tonally at that point for the worse.

X-Men: First Class is one of the best comic book films we’ve seen to date. It remains faithful to the intent of the source material, while embracing it’s own sense of purpose and drive. With this planned to be the first of a new X-Men trilogy, I am completely on board for further exploration of this era of the X-Men.

Dan Barrett is the TV blogger for Crikey and participates in way too many podcasts at The Radio Wolf.