X Men: First Good X-Men Film In a While

X-Men: First Class

Director: Matthew Vaughn

Starring: James McAvoy, Micheal Fassbender, Kevin Bacon, Jennifer Lawrence.

Alright, let's be honest up front. X-Men: The Last Stand sucked. Then, when we were ready to forgive Marvel, X-Men Origins: Wolverine came out. That sucked as well. When I heard about yet another X-Men prequel, I was not going to jump on the bandwagon quite yet. However, when I saw the cast and the talented ensemble that was laid out for First Class, I let myself fall in love again. 'Maybe they could do it', I thought, 'Maybe they could give us another good X-Men movie!' Ladies and gentleman, Marvel did not disappoint. X-Men: First Class is an exhilarating, yet episodic, well acted film that brings good review and good standing back to the X-Men franchise.

The film focuses on telling the stories of Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr, respectively. McAvoy plays Xavier, a recent Oxford graduate who lives with his friend and fellow mutant, Raven. Lensherr, in trying to track down the man responsible for discovering his power to control metal and also for the death of his mother, crosses paths with Xavier, who had been hired by the C.I.A to stop Sebastian Shaw, the very man that Lensherr was trying to find. Once united, the two are put in charge of finding mutants to recruit for the C.I.A.'s purposes, (cue the hilarious one-line cameo from Hugh Jackman.) The mutants focus is then to stop Shaw from inciting World War III, and this puts them smack in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

This film works on several levels. The cast is superb with McAvoy at the helm. He is a confident, charismatic presence as the young Charles Xavier. His chemistry with Micheal Fassbender (Lensherr,) is palpable, with plenty of homosexual innuendos to boot; ('He left quite a gap in my life, I was hoping you could fill it' Really?) Believability is important when it comes to comic book films, it's the difference between The Dark Knight and Ghost Rider. Now, the script doesn't work quite as well. There's a rushed, talky quality to much of the dialogue, like the characters being given their iconic nicknames in one convenient line, and never touched upon again, or the discussions regarding the Missile Crisis. The direction feels episodic at times, but that's what you get when you have to tell so many stories in one film. Perhaps that's why Vaughn felt the need for the abundance of title cards in the film. We know we're in Russia when we see marching armies and men speaking Russian, and we know we're in Miami when we were just told that Shaw was in Miami in the last frame. But Vaughn's action sequences are really a marvel (no pun intended.) He infuses a kinetic energy into all of his frames, much like he did in Kick-Ass. Vaughn almost directed X-Men: The Last Stand, so we get to see a glimpse of what that film could have been, although it's main problem was its script, which Vaughn couldn't have saved. Despite some inconsistencies between that film and the comics, I would say that Marvel has brought us a film that, despite its issues, holds the summer hostage as the best film to come out so far.

Score: 8/10