[Film Review] X-Men: First Class

Note: This review contains spoilers.


With the rise of comic book adaptations in the early 2000s, the X-Men movies were leaders of the pack.  Though not the only or even the biggest super hero movies of their time, they were one of the most successful attempts at translating the cartoonish attachment towards realism the comics had into something an audience less than willing to meet such an approach half way could understand.  The original X-Men movie ambitiously starts with antagonist Magneto being torn from his parents in a holocaust concentration camp, the character's prisoner number tattoo effectively used as metaphor for his fear those different could suffer from the majority, and pointing out the irony of his own master race philosophies in contrast to that majority.  The movie updated the comic's sense of reality in other ways, replacing the goofy yellow suits with cool black leather, or giving the queer metaphors a much more obvious and real spin, appealing to a modern audience more receptive to the themes.  The film was far from perfect, occasionally being campy or otherwise full of blockbuster shenanigans, but overall it was a success.  X2, it's sequel, topped it with a sharper script, but then the series fell apart after the dull and dumbed down X-men: The Last Stand, despite that film utilizing one of the most classic archs in comic book history.

Thus, X-Men: First Class is born, a reboot of the franchise despite literally opening with the same scene from the first film (literally cut from one and placed here, as though to assert outright that this is a prequel, even though, as we've learned with the sequels, this is not true).  Now, when this film was released in 2011and a decade after the first film, the world has warmed up quite a bit more to the super hero genre -- to put it lightly.  First Class allows for the X-Men comics' zanier pieces to exist, forgoing the dark tone of the original trilogy for something far more akin to the first Captain America film.  It's funny, the characters charismatic (well, one of them anyway), and plays with the period for fun rather than realism. 

First Class starts by introducing us to the antagonist, Sebastien Shaw, the Nazi officer responsible for Magneto tapping into his mutant powers (and all it took was for him to shoot young Magneto's mother in front of him).  In the 60s, Shaw has recruited other mutants and begun manipulating various military officers into ramping up the cold war to bring about nuclear holocaust, convinced humanity would die while mutants would thrive (although they never actually confirm mutants can survive nuclear fallout any better than the rest of us chumps, but that's on the low end of the problems here).  The yet unformed X-men have to go in with the CIA to halt this potential horror from occurring during -- you guessed it -- the Cuban Missile Crisis.  At the time this develops, Magneto is off hunting Nazi officers and slowly tracking down Shaw specifically, ready to take revenge on the man who killed his mother (although why he didn't do this as a boy when he was crumpling every metallic object in Shaw's office like scratch paper after witnessing his mother's death is honestly beyond me).  Professor X, however, is given a different story altogether than you would expect coming off the other three films in this franchise (yes, I am ignoring that Wolverine movie, and I will continue to for as long as I'm alive).  As a boy, he catches a young (and inexplicably American) Mystique rummaging around in his kitchen.  The boy virtually adopts her as a sister, and by the time the 60s have washed over them, Professor X is attempting at getting his doctorate while Mystique waits tables.  The two come into contact with a CIA agent after she stumbles across Shaw meeting with a Colonel and she witnesses mutants for the first time.  Professor X, giving his thesis on genetic mutation around this time, is the perfect person to talk to about this she surmises (and she basically wins the lottery).  They attempt to intervene with Shaw but it backfires, outside of their meeting Magneto there to do the same thing, to put it mildly.  Magneto groups up with his newfound peers and, with the CIA's help, they are able to locate several other mutants and get them to enlist in a CIA program honing mutant powers.  All goes awry when Shaw destroys the facility, taking one of the mutants and killing another.  Professor X is forced to gather everyone at his childhood home, which is virtually a castle (his being raised incredibly wealthy), where he is able to get everyone to hone their powers before their confrontation with Shaw, where naturally Magneto kills Shaw and becomes the antagonist we all know, Mystique following him. 

My biggest gripe with the plot is in how it under utilizes Magneto.  Magneto and Shaw may have different methods with which they want to attain their master race ambitions, but the core philosophy is the same -- Magneto even admits as much to Shaw during the climax.  The issue with this is in how dramatically flat it comes off in execution.  Magneto's philosophy is ironic given it was birthed in trauma born of a similar mentality as his own -- it is a major driving force for his character, and one of his most complex aspects, the tortured part of his psyche that Professor X desperately wants to help with in his dear friend but cannot, no matter what he does.  The monstrosities of man bred a monster, and humanity must live with the cycle they have created.  Here, however, it is dealt with in an almost unaware way.  Magneto acknowledges their similarity, but never the irony of his own rage filled ambitions.  What is even the point in having these two so similar if it does nothing for this character, and by extension this character's interaction with other characters? 

Likewise, though we get enough Professor X and Magneto friendship to give us a vague understanding and believability for their close friendship and mutual respect, it would have been far more effective as the main thread of the movie.  Professor X and Magneto are both intelligent and ambitious, with big ideas about the world, Magneto thinking more personally and with a vitriolic sense of the other or otherness, while Professor X has the privileged albeit morally sound perspective of the aristocracy.  Professor X is pretentious and arrogant, the intellectual whose mutation has been all gift.  He easily ignores those closest to him for what he finds the more important issues or their sound conclusions.  His relationship with Mystique is one of the best played aspects in the film, because he swears never to read her mind even though doing so would have sobered him up to how the lower class analogous mutants feel having to hide their physical deformities from the world at large.  In the end, when he reads her mind finally, he encourages her to go with Magneto, realizing Magneto spoke more to her person than he, and this scene is good but it is mishandled by a film that was thematically wasting time on 60s flavor and campy nonsense with the young mutants rather than a compelling conflict or character driven drama the story seems so well equipped to explore.  There's a copious amount of "that's fine" in this film, but so much of it seems swollen with character potential and great set up that it's hard to feel anything except disappointed by the rolling credits.

In the immortal words of Moe Sizlack, "Quit telling us what it aint, and start telling us what it am!", and what it am is a goofy yet fun new take on the X-Men franchise.  It hits all of the predictable notes down to corny lines about Professor X going bald, and "don't ask, don't tell" references in case the symbolism -- thin as it is here -- didn't land for you organically.  As far as first steps go (or, fucking hell, what do we call a reboot's potential new-ness?), X-Men: First Class hits the bare minimum to be "good", being enjoyable and setting up at least a couple of characters I'd like to see again, although only just.  It's good to see X-Men try something different with this iteration, and I hope it leads to at least one more good film as I've heard.  But I'm skeptical.



6.5