X-Men: First Class

X-Men: First Class (2011)
first viewing

I had some fairly high hopes for this film. While the original idea didn't grab me I loved the look of the trailers, which made it seem they were mixing superhero action, true historical events and Mad Men style period style.

Those hopes were met and actually surpassed. This is a wonderfully entertaining film. Great action, touches of humour and strong performances all corralled by Matthew Vaughn into a film that will most likely remain as one of the best of the year.

To make this film work it really needed two great performances from the central characters of Magneto and Xavier; and it got them. James McAvoy is just about spot-on for Xavier, portraying the wisdom and strength we saw from Patrick Stewart, while matching it with a charm and cheekiness that goes with youth.

I'd have to say however that he is perhaps outdone by Michael Fassbender who is fantastic as the young Erik Lensherr. By the end of the film we actually do feel a sense of sympathy and empathy for him; we understand why he becomes the nemesis to the X-Men that he does. I particularly liked the line that went something like "I've been the victim of men who were just doing their job before. Never again."

Placing the characters into a real historical event works very well. It's already a story that most people know and are intereted in. And when they have to take so much time to set-up all these new characters it's a nice time-saver to have an already established story, instead of trying to weave a new tale.

My one complaint about the film would be Kevin Bacon's character. Nothing to do with Kevin Bacon's performance (I think he's actually very good), more that the character just wasn't developed that well in my opinion. No real in depth analysis was made of the character to explain his motivations. It's as if we're just to accept the fact that he was a Nazi so obviously he's an evil bugger!

And I didn't understand about his mutant ability. Was he born with it and that's why he was so interested in studying it for the Nazis? Or did he learn so much while studying Erik that he was able to give himself a mutant ability? Perhaps I just missed that bit. Perhaps I'm just being daft.

To me they seemed more interested in developing Magneto as the villain for future movies, rather than developing a strong villain for this movie.

But that's a minor complaint in an otherwise thoroughly entertaining romp. With Thor and X-Men: First Class down, it's just left to Captain America to see if we can have a stunning summer of Marvel movies. Coming in I actually thought Captain America looked like being the best of the three, so if it is able to acheive that it will be something very special

Oh yeah and there is a fantastic surprise cameo.

Conclusion - The best X-Men film so far and for me personally one of the most enjoyable superhero films so far.