X-men Month - Mini Review: X-men: First Class

If you thought we were done with prequels, you were wrong as they decided to look a little more in-depth at the relationship between Charles Xavier and Magneto that would ultimately lead them to become the ultimate frenemies.

X-men First Class was the 2011 entry to the X-men series, Bryan Singer is back but not as a director as he had other projects to attend to. He instead served as a co-writer and producer to the movie. The director? Michael Vaughn, the guy originally intending to direct the Last Stand.

Produced on an estimated $140-160m budget, they move was reasonably successful, earning $350m for Fox and that’s enough that persuaded them to continue on with the movie making and ultimately make 2 sequels to it (possibly more, you never know) one a hybrid with the old-x-men movies with the purpose of cutting out the originals from continuity.

It’s also the first X-men movie I ever watched. It was universally acclaimed at the time with an 86% rotten tomatoes rating, 65% on metacritic and an average 7.8/10 on IMDb. What’s my thoughts, well let’s take a look.

I’ll start by addressing one major continuity error and one minor one. The major continuity error is the fact this ending happens so soon in their careers goes against them meeting Jean in X-men 3. In that movie, they were still friends and Charles still had the use of his legs whilst still looking like Patrick Stuart. Oh and in this version, Moira comes up with the name X-men when in X-men the name was an affection name from his students, Moira was not one of them.

So, we begin with a young Erik Lehnsherr getting used to his magnetic powers under the tutalege of Dr Klaus Schmidt (Red Skull’s alter-ego was Johan Schmidt and they mention a Strucker in this too, it’s like their baiting Marvel to use Hydra) concurrently we see Charles meet Raven for the first time

Cut to few years later and Erik is on the hunt for Klaus, who had assembled the Hellfire Club: featuring Emma Frost, Riptide and Azreal. They intend to use the escalating nuclear tensions between the USA and Russia to cause a war that would wipe out humanity/create more mutants. Moira hears their conversation but isn’t believed so she calls upon Charles.

He constructs a group featuring himself, Erik (who he’d discovered in a failed attempt to stop Klaus Schmidt, now calling himself Klaus Shaw) aka Magneto, Raven aka Mystique, Hank McCoy aka Beast (who also seems to be Forge in this version – go figure) Angel Salvadore AKA Tempest, Amando Munos aka Darwin (he’s the black guy who dies) Alex Summers AKA Havok and Sean Cassidy AKA Banshee.

They initially have a success, capturing Emma Frost before she could enact her plan but Klaus shows up at their facility, taking Angel and (as I said) killing Darwin. Charles now needs to teach them to control their powers as America and Russia get closer and closer to war, but the greatest enemies are from within as humanity turns against them and Erik begins to “corrupt” mystique for his own ends.

Yeah, there’s quite a lot of narrative to this one, and that’s probably the best thing. Usually we focus too much either on the human or the mutant threat and this one balances that a lot better as we see both mutants and humans working towards agendas here.

James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender also excel with their material as Charles Xavier and Magneto respectively. Jennifer Lawrence also does a fine mystique adding depth to the mutant criminal that has been lacking over the first 3 x-men movies. The other actors do fine with their limited screen time and material, some more memorably than others.

January Jones’ Emma Frost was a bit of an oddity to me. I never really thought of Emma Frost as someone so easily manipulated. She stands on her own feet and sides with what she believes in, her she seems a little too generically evil for my personal tastes. Although I’ll admit it’s nice to see a mutant villain that isn’t Magneto.

The only major misstep for me was the ending. I mean it must be a terrible day for Charles. He loses the use of his legs, a great friend and a person who may as well be a sister to him all in the span of a matter of moments. Couldn’t this coup have waited until after Charles had received medical attention?

Wolverine’s little cameo was hilarious and actually might have some relevance later down the line, but that’s a story for next week. In the meantime, this is the return to form for the X-men movies and the quality will remain relatively consistent for the movies that follow.

Rating 75/100

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Images/clips used in this review are from X-men: First Class and belong to their respective owners. All images in this review are subject to fair use