X-Men: First Class Review
By: Joshua “It’s a mutation. It’s a very groovy mutation.” Richey
[WARNING: I’m a hardcore X-Men fanatic. 90% of this review will involve me showcasing how big of a nerd I am. If you want to skip all of that and just see my review, feel free to scroll down to the bottom.]
When it comes to the X-Men, I guess you could say that I’m somewhat pathetic. As a kid, it’s normal to become interested in something only to lose that interest once something even better comes along. When I was young, my interests went from Popples-to-Ghostbusters, Ghostbusters-to-Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles-to-X-Men. That was it, really. From about the age of nine on, I was an X-Kid. People within my age range were exposed to the X-Men universe at the perfect time. While the X-Men comics had been around since Stan Lee created them back in the 1960’s, their popularity really flourished with X-Men: The Animated Series, a Saturday morning cartoon on Fox. Cartoons on Saturday morning were a big part of every child’s life back in the early-90’s. Your options back then included Bugs Bunny, Garfield, the Muppet Babies; you even had a cartoon based on Super Dave Osborne. But then there were the X-Men; a show filled with fascinating characters partaking in storylines that were drenched in real-life subject matter. It was a cartoon that didn’t treat you like a kid. I mean, you didn’t see Bobby’s World touching on themes such as evolution, racism, sacrifice, equality and nuclear war, did you? For years, X-Men at 11 a.m. on Saturday mornings was a tradition of mine. It even took precedence over Christmas presents one year (The Dark Phoenix Saga > Christmas). That cartoon led to me becoming obsessed with the X-Men. It’s all that my friends and I would talk about. We would all try to catch up on thirty years of comic books – which was very difficult to do pre-internet — we would collect every action figure that would come out, and we hoped and prayed that, one day, Hollywood would make an X-Men movie. That didn’t end up happening until the year 2000.
While most of you probably have positive memories of the Bryan Singer X-Men films, I was very disappointed with them – though I wouldn’t quite say that I hated them. For me, those films were filled with bad decisions and missed opportunities by Singer, the writers and the producers. So many things about those films drive me crazy as a lifelong X-Men fan. I hate the amount of control that Bryan Singer was given with that franchise. He directed one good film (The Usual Suspects) – though highly overrated – and suddenly is trusted with the entire X-Men franchise. Singer was just the beginning of my frustrations. I hated that the first X-Men had such a small budget; I hated the black leather uniforms; I hated how Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine became the central character of every film; I hated the fight scenes; and I hated how unfaithful they were to the source material. None of those things had any effect on 90% of the audience that watched those films; but for X-Men die-hards like me, it was enough for us to pout.
Those weren’t the X-films that I wanted. As it turns out, what I wanted was a film like X-Men: First Class.
The 1960’s were a chaotic time in U.S. history. Not only was the United States in the midst of the Cold War with Russia, both playing a dangerous game of cat and mouse that teased the beginning of the next World War, mutants, evolved humans with remarkable and sometimes frightening gifts, began to pop up all over the globe. Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) is one of these mutants. Charles, along with his foster sister Raven (Jennifer Lawrence), is recruited by the CIA to help learn more about Sabastion Shaw, an evil mutant that has an invested interest in the United States and Russia going to war. It’s during his investigation of Shaw that Xavier meets Erik Lensherr (Michael Fassbender), a very powerful mutant that has a personal vendetta against Shaw. Lensherr and Xavier team up to take down Shaw and his associates, but need to recruit a number of other young mutants to help in their cause. Along the way, Charles must prepare the young mutants to help prevent World War III while also attempting to convince Erik that mutants and humans can coexist.
I’ve been worried about X-Men: First Class since the moment that I heard that it was in development. Initially, producers for the film hired the writer of the O.C. and Gossip Girl to write the script. When you make that kind of hire, it was pretty clear that Fox wanted to go a completely different direction with the X-Men films. By that point, X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine had come out and basically ruined all interest in the franchise. Honestly, I was just hoping they would let it die. Then Bryan Singer, fresh off his Superman flop, came back into the picture, tail placed firmly between his legs. While it was encouraging that we weren’t getting a teenage X-Men soap opera, I still wasn’t leaping for joy because, as I’ve said, I wasn’t a fan of Singer’s X-Men films. A Warner Bros. contract obligation prevented Singer from directing First Class, but he did stay on as a producer. Matthew Vaughn, director of Kick-Ass and Layer Cake, took over the project. Now the ironic thing about Vaughn is that he was originally attached to the third X-Men film. I remember being geeked about Vaughn doing an X-Men film because I had been such a fan of his work. Vaughn then backed out of X-Men: The Last Stand right before they began shooting. That’s what led to Mr. Douchebag, Brett Ratner, making that abortion of a film. While I loathe everything that Ratner stands for, he’s not 100% to blame for X-Men: The Last Stand being the shit stain that it was. Like I said, Vaughn left that project at the last minute, meaning that a lot of the elements that made the film bad (the story, characters and setup) were on him as well. So, obviously, when Matthew Vaughn was named as the director of First Class, it’s not like my faith in the project was restored.
Taking that cynical approach allowed me to have zero expectations for X-Men: First Class. For the last several months, with every news bit that would leak out, with every casting decision that would be announced, I couldn’t help but to just roll my eyes and continue not giving a damn. That’s why it’s so weird that this movie absolutely kicked my ass. Does it still have some elements that make my inner-X-Nerd get all butthurt? Sure. There are some straight up corny ass moments in this movie; you can tell that [producer] Bryan Singer made sure that this film doesn’t step on the toes of any of his X-Men films; I don’t understand why they have some of these characters in this film when there are so many other (and better) characters to choose from; I’m not a fan of Xavier’s first class not being the same as it was in the comics; Beast looks like he should be in a Dr. Seuss movie; and January Jones’ acting abilities are almost Paris Hilton-like – though her cleavage is way better than Hilton’s.
But what’s so great about this X-Men film is that, despite my nerdy complaints, I loved it. This movie feels like the comic books that I grew up reading. These characters are way more fleshed out than what we’ve seen in the other films, and setting the film during the 1960’s during the Cuban Missile Crisis really helps give the film a unique look and feel. And then there’s Michael Fassbender. Just as the original X-Men film propelled Hugh Jackman to stardom, I fully expect that the same will happen for Fassbender after his performance in First Class. As Magneto, Fassbender perfectly captures the intimidating and complex aspects that the character requires, but he’s also complete badass. Imagine if James Bond had the ability to control metal…that’s Fassbender’s Magneto. Watching that character develop over the course of two hours is well worth the price of admission. And it’s not just Fassbender that puts on a great performance here. Kevin Bacon…yeah, I said it…Kevin freaking Bacon is awesome in this. He has a scene within the first 10 minutes of this movie that gives me goosebumps just thinking about. I’ve hated Kevin Bacon every since he killed that dog in Hollow Man — I don’t give a fuck if it was just a movie — but I’ve got to admit that he pretty spectacular as Sebastian Shaw.
There are a million reasons for why this movie should be bad, but it just works.
TL;DR – X-Men: First Class is astounding. It’s by far my favorite X-Men film to date. I give X-Men: First Class four token black mutants out of five.
