X-Men: First Class

Director: Matthew Vaughn
Starring: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Rose Byrne, January Jones, and Kevin Bacon
Distributor: Twentieth Century Fox
Runtime: 132 mins. Reviewed in Nov 2011

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Rating notes: Action violence and infrequent coarse language

The movie quickly establishes the friendship between Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender). Erik’s mother was killed in a German concentration camp, and he never loses the memory of her extermination at the hands of Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) who murdered his mother to test Erik’s emerging super-powers. Charles and Erik stay friends, but they finally position themselves on opposite moral sides in the cold war struggle of the early 60s. Charles takes the name of Professor X, and Erik becomes Magneto. In this initial saga, both men join forces to form a team of mutants to do battle with Sebastian Shaw, who gathers his own team under the motto “born to be enslaved, or rise up to rule”.

The Cuban missile crisis is presented as a conflict between warring mutants, rather than warring nations. Sebastian Shaw heads up a secret society of mutants wanting to take over the world, despite the best intentions of the US and the USSR. In adult life, Erik roams the world looking for Nazis to kill, and Sebastian Shaw is his prime target, while Charles is recruited by the CIA to establish a “Division of Mutant Powers”. For Erik, nuclear war is the next step in evolution. Charles disagrees, but finally accepts that mutants will never be the friends of humankind, because they are so different.

Sebastian, Charles, Eric and the other mutants use their super-powers to supply some incredible action-based special effects that fill the movie’s 132 minutes. The scenes of the Cuban Missile Crisis, occurring amidst the conflict of warring mutants, lend a new look to famous historical events. Erik wants nuclear war between the US and the USSR, because it will strengthen the mutants, while Charles works to avoid it at any cost. The final scenes of the movie, however, start to go overboard in the effects that they show. Here, the movie begins its descent into a standard formulaic fantasy-adventure that competes for the marvel of what it produces.

Despite such misgivings, this film is worthy of the series. Its action sequences are constructed well, and the direction by Matthew Vaughn is spirited and energetic. There is a dramatic coherence to the plot-line that prepares us well for the stories that lie ahead, and both story and action sequences create considerable tension. The first hour of the movie is spent flitting from country to country to set the story-line, and the build-up to the final confrontation between Professor X, Magneto, and Sebastian Shaw is involving.

The female acting leads in the movie provide a contrasting touch. Rose Byrne, as Moira MacTaggert, a non-mutant scientist with expertise in genetic mutation, captures her love for Charles, and January Jones pulls the stops out as Emma Frost, a mutant telepath, who can change her body into diamond form, and who holds on to her smouldering looks with style.

This movie is a good adventure night out. It entertains, and re-energises a series that had begun to lose its originality.