X-Men: First Class review.

First things first; This isn’t a Marvel Studios film so there’s no need to hang around until the end of the credits; well other than to see the names of the all the hard working people who made this film possible of course. Not Even Stan Lee, although there are some great cameos in the film from cast members of the Original Trilogy.

It isn't for little ones. Apart from possibly the best ever single use of the F word, there is torture and plenty  of intense killing too.

Marvel fans Hate Fox with a passion and want their Marvel movies back with Marvel studios. Well listen up Fox have made their second film in the top 5 comic book movies of all time. It's not as high up as X2, but this is easily one of the best super hero movies ever made!

The SP

This is an excellent film. A great story, superbly cast actors who fully fit the roles they’ve been given and a director who, despite being short changed on budget & time again, pulls the whole thing together like a master. This hits the gold standard for Super Hero movies set by X2, only falling a whisker short of that movie by virtue of not having quite as much political subtext.

Story time

In Bryan Singers X-Men the films begins with a young Erik Lehnsherr being forcibly separated from his parents at a Nazi Concentration Camp. This film has the exact same beginning, recreated so that we can see what happened next; whereas the first X-Men film jumped straight to the “not too distant future”. (Anyone know if that’s now the even closer future, or the recent past?) Here we see the young Erik suffer what we pretty much assumed he’d suffer after watching X-Men. Various nefarious methods are used to try and encourage the growth of Master Erik’s gifts. Much as J J Abrams Star Trek starts by following the two main protagonists as they move inexorably towards their destined meeting, Vaughan adeptly switches to Charles Xavier’s childhood and his chance encounter with another young mutant, Raven Darkholme, the future Mystique.

When we see these characters again, as young adults we get a surreal Bond mix. Fassbender is travelling the world doing a fair approximation of Sean Connery’s early bond, menacing anyone and everyone who gets in his way as he tracks down Nazis, both as punishment for their crimes and to help find his tormentor in chief. (The scene where he tortures a Swiss Banker for information is brilliant) Whilst Xavier reminds me of Roger Moore’s Bond, cheesily using his gifts (a La Kirk in Abrams’ Trek) to pick up beautiful women. It’s here that we can see that Raven, who has grown up with Charles since that early encounter, is plainly in love, or at the very least infatuated with Charles.

It has been said, far too many times, by far too many movie experts, that the absence of Wolverine was going to be a problem here. Well his role is ably filled by Fassbender’s Erik. In fact the way his character has been written is the key missing ingredient from X-Men Origins: Wolverine. With Wolverine they had a hero with a dark past, but they were so fearful of putting people off the character they forgot to make his past dark enough. There should have been clear scenes, like the one in this film where Erik tortures, threatens and kills people (bad people) to get what he is after. It makes for some thrilling, if disturbing scenes and the fact that all of this is played straight as if this film were simply a Nazi hunter film or spy movie where instead of gadgets characters have powers.

So what leads to these two people (and Raven) meeting up. Well that’s where the major antagonists of the film come in. The Hellfire Club, notably the incredibly powerful duo of Sebastian Shaw (brilliantly portrayed be Kevin Bacon) and Emma Frost (a very good performance by a frankly ill looking January Jones). It turns out that Shaw is the real name of Erik’s ‘Mentor’, chief torturer, from his childhood. Another scene that seems straight out of a Connery Bond film, in Argentina has finally led Erik to Shaw’s whereabouts. Meanwhile, Charles has finally become a professor (despite his protestations that he isn’t technically a professor until he has students to teach) and Moira McTaggert, fighting sexism in the C.I.A, has sought out his expertise in genetic mutation. She makes a shocking discovery whilst spying on the Hellfire club and needs help to both convince her superiors that there are people with amazing powers on the loose.

The final coming together of the four elements, Shaw’s Hellfire Club, Charles and Raven, The C.I.A and Erik is a quite thrilling sequence that begins with Erik’s untimely discovery that he is by no means the only gifted person on the planet. Thwarted in his attempt to kill Shaw he is in the water as the C.I.A, aided by Charles and Raven, attempt to arrest Shaw and the Hellfire club aboard their yacht. Caught between the vengeful Erik and the C.I.A the club, in another Bond like motif, flee to their rather nifty submarine, conveniently located under the yacht. (You know you want one)

At this point the film starts to resemble Hellboy II.  Wherein the good guys are trying to do right by the world and just get along with the “normal” humans. Meanwhile the norms show contempt, mistrust and worse for the “freaks” and you wonder why any of the mutants continue to bother being on “our” side at all.

In fact when Sabastian Shaw offers the prospective X-Men the chance to join the Hellfire club, rather than stay with the C.I.A and fight for the people that hate and fear them, you’re left wondering why on Earth only one of them chooses to go. (Although the serious amount of killing & destruction Shaw, Azazel (Jason Flemyng) and Riptide (Alex Gonzalez) do in getting to them, may well have put some off. I have to say though that perhaps Vaughan and Co took the 1960’s setting a little too far, with what feels very much like a “token black guy” thing going on with Darwin (Edi Gathegi), even with Angel’s (Zoe Kravitz) presence.

Meanwhile Emma Frost is continuing the master (race) plans of The Hellfire club by influencing the Soviet half of the Cuban Missile crisis. It is to the credit of this production that amidst the telepathy and flying and other mutant powers it is the only true event that seems the most ridiculous. In this film threats, and mind control lead the men in power to take the world to within minutes of Nuclear Armageddon; what on Earth was the excuse for the real men who led the world almost half a century ago!

There then follows an incredibly rushed sequence wherein the seeds are sown for the future School for the Gifted and the mutants, Xavier nad Erik included, start to learn how to hone their gifts and use them in the field.

Some of the most poignant moments take place during this part of the film. The best scene probably the one in which Charles is trying to get Magneto to stretch the limits of his powers. It is likely that his power will be needed to prevent WWIII. With the main motivator for release his anger, Erik has been limiting himself by using just this and Charles allows him to find a different centre. It’s pretty touching and reminiscent of the scene between Wolverine and Rogue in X-Men, where she asks him if it hurts when he pops out his claws; “Every time.” is the touching reply. What also makes this film stand out is the way that there’s a lot of fear and shame amongst the mutants here. Raven is still in ”disguise” all the time, Beast is ashamed of the physical manifestation of his gifts, even just in his feet, but worse Charles himself is the same. When questioned as to whether he could date Raven he is quite positive that she is beautiful and anyone would be lucky to have her, when she explains that she means the real her, suddenly her being like his sister means he can’t answer the question. Now I’m sure that, just as some Star Trek fan(atic)s were disgusted to discover that Kirk didn’t come out of the womb 35 years old and perfect, there will be some who find this, and the other things Xavier gets “wrong” in this film, distasteful or nigh on blasphemous, but it adds to the richness of his character and does show us more why Mystique becomes the right hand man of Magneto, walks around naked and thoroughly pro- mutant rights. We do, thank goodness, get an answer to how on Earth she can be a child of a similar age to Charles and Erik here, but still look like a woman in her early 30s when in “norm” form in X3.

All of this leads to a thrilling confrontation between the US and Soviet fleets, the proto X-Men and the Hellfire club. It’s all very exciting and whilst Vaughan appears to have realised that there nothing they could do with Azazel that would match that character’s son’s (Nightcrawler) attack on The Whitehouse at the start of X2, so instead opts to have him use his power in a much more brutal and devastating manner. Think f Nightcrawler as an artist, a dancer and Azazel as a barenuckle brawler. It may not be pretty but it gets the job done as quickly as possible.

The flaws

The only X-Men film that’s truly been given the kind of budget necessary to do the team justice is X3. Bryan Singer managed to get a hell of a lot out of mid range blockbuster budgets, but there was always the tail of the things he couldn’t afford. The Danger room, Colossus for more than 5 seconds in X2 and more. This film suffers from a similar lack of total belief from Fox. There are some scenes where the effects are just not quite up to standard, which is a shame really. I’ve mentioned the token black guy thing, already and the final problem is the rish to meet this release date. That may also have affected the effects, but am I the only one who noticed Fassbender’s accent slip towards the end of the film? Especially once he got to beach in this scene near the end. Irish much?..