"X-Men: First Class" Review

After the abomination that was X-Men: The Last Stand, and the underwhelming X-Men Origins: Wolverine, you may be asking yourselves: do we really need another X-Men movie? After seeing X-Men: First Class, I can tell you the answer is a resounding yes.

Rather than continuing the story of the first film trilogy, X-Men: First Class takes us back to 1962 and the origins of the first group of X-Men. Charles Xavier—Professor X—is a new doctoral graduate of Oxford; Eric Lenssher—Magneto—is a globe-trotting Nazi hunter, determined to track down the man who murdered his mother in a concentration camp.

The film is set against the backdrop of the Cold War as mutant Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) orchestrates a plot to begin a nuclear war between the United States and Soviet Union. His goal is that the radiation from the nuclear fallout to create a new race of mutants, with him as their ruler. The CIA recruits Charles (James McAvoy, Wanted) and Eric (Michael Fassbender, Inglorious Basterds and Jane Eyre) to form a team of mutant operatives to stop Shaw.

The climax of the film takes place during the Cuban Missile Crisis as Charles and the X-Men face off against Shaw’s mutants with the entire world at stake.

The best thing about X-Men: First Class is that, despite the dramatic setting, it’s a story about the characters and their struggles to find a place in a fearful and suspicious world. The movie spends a lot of time building the relationships between the characters—especially Charles and Eric. Their friendship is both fun and painful to watch because they build a strong bond, but we know it’s doomed from the start.

It’s a lot of fun to see these familiar characters as young men—instead of the incredibly serious Professor X, for example, Charles is a fun-loving, hard-drinking womanizer when we first meet him. There’s also a great scene where the younger mutant recruits spend a drunken night showing off their abilities.

The most refreshing part of X-Men: First Class is that it doesn’t rely on special effects or spectacle to try to drive the story, which was the major pitfall of the other X-Men films. Instead, it’s the humanity of the characters, their personal struggles, and their relationships that drive the plot and make the audience invest in the journey.

It’s this approach to storytelling that makes X-Men: First Class a first-class film, and the best in the franchise.

8.5 of 10