X-Men First Class - movie review

The X-Men movies were known, by fans of the comics, as reinterpretations of the characters, locations and stories within one of the most famous, and epic, comic book series of all time. Director Brian Singer took the core elements, gutted them, gussied them up and made them dance. The first X-Men film, whilst not terrible, was a bizarre, broad film filled with terrible wire-fighting, and since the ensuing years have been filled with increasingly sophisticated and meditative takes on the genre, it seems as primitive as hell. The second film was a vast improvement; it did away with the slow-moving, dull-witted plot of the first, and injected a boatload of adrenaline into the proceedings. The X-Men worked well as a team and as individuals, they were harried by genuine threats, and Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) tore shit up just like Wolverine is meant to.

Then, Brett Ratner came. Yeah. That piece of shit, right there.

Ratner, previously having directed Family Man (a Nicholas Cage/Tea Leoni rom-com with all the requisite charm of a discarded anal bead), and both Rush Hour movies, was given the Herculean task of helming part three in the trilogy, while Singer sauntered off and resurrected the Superman Franchise. Ratner then somehow allowed Halle Berry to wrest an unbelievable measure of creative clout away from him, which she used to make Storm effectively the leading lady of the piece. The plot was an abhorrent mess, characters were killed off for no apparent reason, and worst of all, it paved the way for the stand-alone Wolverine film, which sucked so hard you could carry a bowling ball around beneath it smugly on daytime television.

It is, therefore, with a great deal of relief that I can say out loud that X-Men: First Class is a good movie. If you're a fan of the comics, and if you're an X-Men purist, know this: it's cut from the same cloth that Singer made the first films out of, meaning it has the same rewritten logic, the same compressed timelines, and the same omitted or entirely messed up character arcs. However, it has the singular good fortune of begin significantly more subtle. More story based. In fact, you could safely dispense with the action sequences, and you'd have something akin to mutant Hogwarts. Running parallel to that, and often intertwining with it beautifully, is the tragic rise and fall of a friendship, namely one between Charles Xavier, and Erik Lehnsherr.

The film begins by following the dual origins of these two men. As boys, one has the twin flames that are his loving parents snuffed out at a concentration camp, at which point his powers are witnessed by a terminally nasty and ruthlessly well played professor, played by Kevin Bacon. We cut to Erik as a grown man (played superbly by Michael Fassbender), stalking the world, exacting crude vengeance on rung upon rung of a ladder of now aged Nazis. At the top of this ladder, he hopes, is his twisted creator, the professor who discovered, made and ruined him.

Simultaneously, we get to skirt alongside a young, entirely ambulatory and staggeringly charming Charles Xavier (played perfectly by James McAvoy), initially as he catches a shapeshifting prowler in his cavernous kitchen one night; this intruder turns out to be Raven (aka Mystique, aka the blue chick with red hair). The two become close friends, as evidenced by the flash-forward to Xavier as he chats up a girl in a campus pub. Nearing the end of his degree, and almost an actual professor, he uses his wit and intellect to finagle sexual favours, until, that is, his efforts are stymied by his now best friend, Raven (Jennifer Lawrence). The two walk off, arm in arm.

Eventually, the Cuban missile crisis rears it's ugly head. Having the narrative jump from the '40s to the '60s allows the film to not only use the music, fashion, architecture and lingo of the sixties, it allows us historical context; the Cuban missile crisis forms the nexus point upon which, at least in this film, the X-Men will be forged, and then broken. The most strikingly enjoyable, and well executed passages in First Class are those involving Charles and Erik. Their friendship is deeply affecting, and you really do feel this crushing sense of impending doom when you consider where the two will end up. McAvoy is articulate, charming and wonderfully understated, and Fassbender is absolutely perfect; you can see the inner turmoil inside him threatening to bubble out. In this respect, the film is really a platonic love story between two soulmates who end up on opposite sides of a terrible moral chasm.

The students they recruit to their new team are quite good, too; in particular, Nicholas Hoult as Hank McCoy (also known as Beast). Banshee and Havoc make up members of the team as well, although it was jarring, as something of a fan, to see Banshee was no longer Irish. Similarly, Xavier's love interest, Moira McTaggart, was rendered American. Moira is played by the very talented Rose Byrne, but I could hear fans around me in the cinema chafing at the change. But that's the nature of the beast, really; the core ingredients of the X-Men universe being used to make a totally separate dish. And it tastes fantastic.

The only two things that let it down were the score, which sucks (really, unforgivably wooden at times) and the fact that they've tried to cram way too much into one film. Really, what they should have done was give it the Game of Thrones treatment and make a big, detailed, character-driven story all about the early Academy days. Because I wanted to see more of the mutants training, falling in love, fighting, dying, and usually coming back to life again. I wanted more from the friendship between Charles and Erik, because honestly, you could watch it go on for hours and hours without tiring. And I didn't feel the need for such a rushed ending, and ending which technically could segue into another film, but one which (you can clearly tell) was made just in case a sequel never got commissioned, in which case it would bleed perfectly into the front end of the first X-Men movie.

Although to be perfectly frank, X-Men: First Class is a rock-solid piece of storytelling. It's dynamic, thoughtful, well acted and has a surplus of gingers. Which is always a wonderful, wonderful thing to have.

- Three and a half stars



X-Men: First Class opens in cinemas Thursday, June 2.