Film Review: X-Men: First Class

It's not been the smoothest of journeys, the X-Men franchise. Things started well, with Bryan Singers top notch double to open the series, and the way the second was left open for a third, things were looking very rosy indeed. Then Singer wanted to go over to Warner and do Superman Returns, Fox didn't want to wait for him to finish, so we ended up with X-Men: The Last Stand, helmed by everyones least favourite hack, Brett Ratner.

To say The Last Stand was a disaster was an understatement. The film came out in 2006, and to this day I still cannot get my head around how it was fumbled so badly. I understand Ratner is a director who has very defined limitations (a nice way of saying stick to Rush Hour films) but everything was set up so perfectly at the end of X2...as you can tell it's still a sore spot with me.

2009 saw the arrival of the first spin off movie, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which was middling to say the least, the highlight of which was probably Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool, but it hardly set the world on fire. If that point needed proving, it's already getting an overhaul in the form of next years 'The Wolverine'.

When the original Wolverine film was announced, there was also talk of a 'Origins' film happening for Magneto, and pretty much that's how we have landed at X-Men: First Class.

XM:FC predominantly focuses on Magneto, then Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender) and Professor X, the Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and how their paths cross back in 1962. Recruited by the CIA to head up a team of mutants, Xavier first meets Lehnsherr whilst the latter is attempting to avenge the death of his mother at the hands of Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), an extremely powerful mutant himself who worked for the Nazis when Lehnsherr was a child.

Lehnsherrs plans go awry, but he ends up joining Xaviers team, and they go about recruiting mutants to form the original 'X-Men', but meanwhile Shaw is attempting to instigate a war between Russia and America by moving missiles to Cuba (which, of course is what later is known as the Cuban Missile Crisis), and it's up to the 'First Class' of X-Men to stop him.

Just taking a glance at the credits for First Class should cause a huge sigh of relief. Bryan Singer returns, this time producing and coming up with some of the story. Thor writers Ashley Edward Miller and Zack Stentz are onboard as scribes as well as Kick-Ass writers Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughan, with Vaughan directing.

The difference between this and the ill-advised sequels and spin-offs is immediate. Similar in many ways to the first X-Men film in how it sets up everything nicely but keeps it all exciting, smart and funny and leaves you hoping for more (and apparently there will be, it's the first in a proposed trilogy) it is everything The Last Stand isn't.

The cast are great too, McAvoy does seem a million miles away from the Patrick Stewart Xavier will all know, but he's engaging and quite amusing throughout, whereas Fassbenders tortured Lehnsherr really gets behind what makes him end up as Magneto in his Ian McKellen incarnation.

The rest of the cast do have to jostle a bit for screen time, but generally impress, although some of the characters are slightly superfluous, almost there to even the numbers for the films climax it seemed. Kevin Bacon is a great bad guy, and the feel of the 60's is hammered home with the casting of January Jones (best known for her work on another 60s set piece, Mad Men) as Emma Frost, the prostitute (only implied) telepath. And there's even a nice little cameo (not Stan Lee this time), that comes very close to stealing the entire movie.

The action sequences are routinely superb. After sitting through Pirates Of The Carribean recently, where most of the action sequences were watchable, but not outstanding, I was starting to worry about films containing truly great action moments, but this delivers in spades. Quite violent also for a 12 certificate, not one for kids to see with parental supervision for sure.

And what a nice change that it wasn't in 3D. It seems to be the norm lately, but with this and the forthcoming Cowboys Vs. Aliens, hopefully it won't be too much of a fixture on the big screen.

So, after 8 years we finally get another great X-Men film. Not sure if this will mean a 3rd sequel in the original X-Men series, but as long as Bryan Singer is supervising I feel the franchise is in great shape whichever way they go next.

****
What a relief. After 5 years of shoddy sequels and spin-offs we finally get another 'X' film worth caring about. Funny, thrilling, dramatic with great performances and fantastic action set pieces. Yeah, the cast is a little crowded at times, but that doesn't really detract at all. Bring on Second Class!