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In my opinion the best of the core X-men films and one of the best superhero films ever made, X-Men: First Class was a fantastic prequel/reboot for the X-Men franchise which needed a revamp following two duds in X3 and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Matthew Vaughn took up the project and brought a whole new feel to the series. James McAvoy is great as a young Charles Xavier and Michael Fassbender plays a perfect Erik Lensherr (Magneto).
The story follows the first group of mutants to be trained at the Xavier institute, featuring Havok, Raven (Mystique), Banshee, Angel, and Beast. The main conflict in the film is from the main villain, Sebastian Shaw, trying to start World War 3 so the mutants can rise to power (as humanity would be all but wiped out as a result). Shaw, played by Kevin Bacon, plays an excellent villain for the film, but really this plays in the background as the most interesting part of the film is the dynamic between Charles and Erik.
The visuals in this film are probably the best in the franchise (as Days of Future Past and Apocalypse, while still good films that I enjoyed, have terrible visual effects by the standards of big budget superhero films), with all the effects looking great and the camera work being top notch. I'm a big fan of the X-men comics and I like the newer X-men films quite a bit (even Apocalypse, which had very little going for it in terms of coherent plot, was a lot of fun). This film definitely struck the right balance between being true to the characters while still standing on it's own and not being a direct adaptation of the source material (since very few of the X-men films follow the comics directly).
39. X-Men: First Class
In my opinion the best of the core X-men films and one of the best superhero films ever made, X-Men: First Class was a fantastic prequel/reboot for the X-Men franchise which needed a revamp following two duds in X3 and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Matthew Vaughn took up the project and brought a whole new feel to the series. James McAvoy is great as a young Charles Xavier and Michael Fassbender plays a perfect Erik Lensherr (Magneto).
The story follows the first group of mutants to be trained at the Xavier institute, featuring Havok, Raven (Mystique), Banshee, Angel, and Beast. The main conflict in the film is from the main villain, Sebastian Shaw, trying to start World War 3 so the mutants can rise to power (as humanity would be all but wiped out as a result). Shaw, played by Kevin Bacon, plays an excellent villain for the film, but really this plays in the background as the most interesting part of the film is the dynamic between Charles and Erik.
The visuals in this film are probably the best in the franchise (as Days of Future Past and Apocalypse, while still good films that I enjoyed, have terrible visual effects by the standards of big budget superhero films), with all the effects looking great and the camera work being top notch. I'm a big fan of the X-men comics and I like the newer X-men films quite a bit (even Apocalypse, which had very little going for it in terms of coherent plot, was a lot of fun). This film definitely struck the right balance between being true to the characters while still standing on it's own and not being a direct adaptation of the source material (since very few of the X-men films follow the comics directly).