X-Men: First Class is a brotherly prequel sequel to the on-going X-Men movie franchise. The film follows a young doctoral candidate Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and his adopted sister Raven (Jennifer Lawrence). Their childhood experience growing up as mutants is paralleled by Erik Lehnsherr's (Michael Fassbender) much more violent youth as a Jewish boy in a Nazi prison camp. Charles is contacted by Agent Moira MacTaggert (Rose Byrne) after she stumbles onto a possible plot to start a third world war being masterminded by group with strange powers. As well as being an expert on human mutation, Charles Xavier is also a mutant himself. Charles and Erik cross paths for the first time when they both attempt to confront Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), the mutant mastermind and Nazi doctor responsible for the death of Erik's mother. Although Shaw escapes in his convenient submarine Charles convinces Erik to join him in finding other mutants like themselves to form a government sponsored team of mutants to fight Shaw and get revenge.
From here on the film follows the typical super hero mold. Charles and Erik seek out and gather a team of mutants. They deal with self doubt and risk the temptations of their darker natures. There is even a pretty good training montage after the team is attacked and decides they need to be more prepared. They move on the enemy, avert a world war, but ultimately remain fractured as Erik takes his revenge and assumes the role of Magneto, the moral heir of Shaw minus the Nazi collaboration.
The film is set roughly somewhere before and after X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and for the most part before the rest of the X-Men series. Fans of the comic books and the films will notice that X-Men First Class exists as a temporal abnormality. Although featured prominently as the second in command to Shaw in First Class, Emma Frost (January Jones) is shown as a child (Tahyna Tozzi) in Origins: Wolverine, which should take place later on the timeline. We also witness Hank McCoy’s (Nicholas Hoult) transformation from man to Beast even though he shows up in his non-hairy form in X2. The film also ends with an explanation of how Charles loses the use of his legs, even though we have seen him, much older, in The Last Stand able to walk to meet young Jean Grey.
Although the film has more temporal abnormalities than a typical episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation I found that they were easy to overlook. The film is a return to the fonder days of X-Men when we enjoyed the first movie and still had fresh memories of the 90's cartoon. Turning over the film to director Matthew Vaughn of Kick Ass and Stardust fame was apparently the kickstart the series needed to get out of its Last Stand and Origins: Wolverine slump. Although the story was still by Brian Singer, First Class features a fresh group of writers and producers. Their take on the X-Men universe actually works quite well, all fact checking aside. I quite enjoyed their take on working the X-Men super hero names into the story. This is always a challenge to do without making it seem forced or come off as just plain silly. Having the teens pick names for themselves during a late night drinking session worked organically and only came off a little awkwardly.
One of my only complaints coming out of the theater was that of all of the thousands of mutants they could have picked for the original X-Men they chose some of the most uninteresting characters. While I'm sure Angel, not to be confused with the other X-Man named Angel featured in The Last Stand, has a very important role in the X-Men universe, it doesn't really make any sense why Charles and Erik would go out of their way to pick up a erotic dancer if they knew they were organizing a strike team.
Technically the film holds up to its predecessors. Personally I would have enjoyed a slightly darker, sepia-toned feel to the film to really set it apart from the rest of the series. I got the feeling that the problems with continuity were less fact checking errors and more of a discrete effort to distance themselves from the rest of the series and really do an X Men movie their own way. It helps that their own way happened to be a pretty good one.
It is also important to note that this is the first film of the franchise to not blatantly feature Wolverine as a main character. In fact, outside of a small but humorous cameo, Wolverine is almost entirely not in the film. Finally it seems that producers are realizing that one of the strengths of the X-Men comic series was that it was an organization that featured many faces and many powers. First Class is truly an ensemble piece and not a vehicle for telling more of the Wolverine story. Hugh Jackman is a fantastic actor and Wolverine is certainly one of the most well known X-Men, but after three films that highly featured his story and one prequel entirely devoted to him I continue to find his back story flat and uninteresting. Hopefully this means that we can look forward to more X-Men movies absent of Wolverine.
Considering that both The Last Stand and Origins: Wolverine were failures with the X Men fan base and critics alike, First Class is a definite step in getting the franchise back on track. I know that I certainly enjoyed it quite a bit.
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