"X-Men: First Class" Review

Three Stars

When I wrote about "Thor," I talked about the problems action movies face when trying to tell their stories.  They're more concerned about a plot that allows for a good deal of action and visual entertainment than coming up with a good story regardless of circumstances. Now don't get me wrong, "X-Men: First Class" was a good movie, and much of what didn't work about this film had nothing to do with it being an action movie, but it can't escape these inherent limitations of its genre. And it should be noted that "First Class" was certainly a vast improvement over the first X-Men sequel concerning Wolverine, which basically did a terrible job establishing Wolverine's character and backstory.

"First Class" follows the origins of several mutants that we later will see in the first three X-Men films, including Mystique and Beast, but most importantly Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr, who later becomes Magneto. The films starts out with Sebastian Shaw, a mutant who can absorb and then emit energy, discovers and tortures a young Erik Lehnsherr in a Nazi concentration camp in order to being out Erik's maximum potential. During the same time period, an adolescent Charles Xavier meets a shapeshifter named Raven (who will later become Mystique) and adopts her into his family, treating her like a younger sister.

Skipping ahead to 1962, Lehnsherr has been systematically hunting down the Nazis who murdered his mother and has his eyes set for Shaw, while Xavier has been finishing his doctorate on genetic mutation in humans in the newly-born atomic age and is recruited by the CIA to help with the Cold War. Lehnsherr's and Xavier's paths cross as Shaw turns out to be working for the Russians, giving the two of them the chance to work together in bringing down Shaw and prevent World War III. Together, Lehnsherr and Xavier begin recruiting mutants to help fight Shaw's own team of mutants, using a newly constructed machine named "Cerebro." Shaw works with the Russians to place nuclear missiles in Cuba, resulting in the Cuban Missile Crisis and a final battle scene in which the future battle lines we've seen in the first three X-Men movies are drawn.

There are a lot of things that work in "First Class" and there are some that don't. All of the major characters, exempt for Shaw for reasons I'll get into shortly, are well defined and do a great job of setting them up down the path of who they become in the first three X-Men movies. Shaw, on the other hand, didn't captive me personally. His villainy is effective for the story's sake, but we never learn where his motivations come from. One of the things that makes Magneto a great villain in the first couple X-Men films comes directly from his journey. His character arc in "First Class" really sells to the audience why he ultimately becomes the antagonist played by Ian McKellen. We never see that with Shaw, and as a result he comes off as mostly one-dimensional.

Lehnsherr's character arc isn't the only one in the movie that's well done. Xavier's evolution (no pun intended) from a student to a teacher and leader shows us how he develops his morals and his conscious as well as his dedication to peace and cooperation. The friendship between Xavier and Lehnsherr, a key dynamic of the previous X-Men films, is established quite well and becomes a rather poignant one, which was no doubt a challenge do to, considering that the audience knows what will happen between the two. Mystique's story was also quite good, though slightly hindered (through no fault of the movie itself) by the fact that the personal conflicts she has in "First Class" are only hinted at in the previous X-Men movies. Her long-lasting friendship with Xavier loses some of its poignancy because we know that nothing ever comes of it in the other movies. But again, that's not the fault of "First Class"because this relationship clearly was never established in the first few movies, as Mystique was much more of a secondary character whose background was never discussed.

The acting in "First Class" was, for the most part, quite good. James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender are excellent at Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr, respectively. McAvoy did a great job projecting the depth and humility that Patrick Stewart first brought to the character. But it was Fassbender who stole the show. He was absolutely fantastic as a deeply wounded and conflicted character whose emotional arc was essentially the core of the movie. But I felt that Jennifer Lawrence, who played Mystique, could have brought a bit more to her character. And I wasn't sold on Kevin Bacon as Sebastian Shaw, but that probably had to do with seeing Kevin Bacon as the main villain in a super hero movie. He felt out of place.

My only major complaints have to do with the music along with a part of the climatic battle sequence. For most of the movie the music felt completely overdone and too melodramatic, which ruined the tone at certain times. I found myself trying not to laugh at how comical and silly of some of the musical swells that were way too much even for the most ridiculous of action movies. My other issue concerns the gratuitous amount of times the film cuts to the commanders of both the American and Russian naval fleets during the final battle. We don't care about these guys or their reactions to what's playing out in front of them, and yet we're forced to endure them over and over again, completely killing the mood every time it happened.

Something else that irked me, though not too much, was the decision to set the action around the Cuban Missile Crisis. Why? Because we know its outcome, even if we don't know how exactly it'll be played out on screen. The threat of a World War III that we know won't come sucks a lot of the drama out of the situation. I like the premiss of placing the action within an actual historical event and solidifying the presence of mutants (a la Forrest Gump) by having them play a pivotal role in it, but in this case there was no suspense. What I did like, though, what was no doubt an homage to "Dr. Strangelove," as the U.S.'s war room in "First Class" clearly mirrored the one in Kubrick's classic film.

All in all, "X-Men: First Class" was a pretty good movie. I quite enjoyed it, which I found to be a pleasant surprise. When I first heard they were making another origins movie after the disastrous Wolverine prequel, I was skeptical of seeing the next sequel. The trailers I saw also left me worried that it would be another terrible super hero movie that was devoted to the action instead of the story. But after hearing about the positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, I decided to take a chance on "First Class" and it more than met my initial expectations. And even though it had its weak spots, the more I think and write about it, the more I find that I like it and desire to see the story continued. I might just have to re-watch "X-Men," the movie that appears to have jump-started the trend of comic book adaptations that have been going on now for over a decade.

Until next time, Orange Hat Guy