Review for X-Men: First Class

Introduction

I actually thought the X-Men franchise was dead. The first two films were outstanding, but then X-Men: The Last Stand came out, which turned a graphic novel adaptation into a comic book adaptation. When the first Wolverine movie arrived to shake things up, telling the title character’s origin story and setting the story in the past, wrapping it around the Three Mile Island incident, it could have been just what the franchise needed, but instead turned out to be even more disappointing than The Last Stand. So you can imagine when I read about X-Men First Class, telling the back story of Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr, set in the sixties, and wrapped around the real-world Cuban Missile Crisis, I failed to be enthused, and also failed to take note of the more than positive reviews the film received. It was only this year’s release of Days of Future Past that made me re-evaluate my latterly disdain for this franchise, and give it another chance. Who knows, if this film is any good, I might even be tempted back into the cinema while the sequel is still playing.


In 1962, Erik Lehnsherr was an angry young man, seeking vengeance and justice for all the ills he and his family had suffered in the concentration camps during World War II. His situation was even more complicated, as a warped scientist named Klaus Schmidt had witnessed Erik’s ability to control metal. Schmidt’s ideas of racial purity and evolution went beyond those of Nazi doctrine, he wanted real power and he did whatever it took to manifest that power in Erik. Now Erik searches for Nazis in hiding after the war, and Klaus Schmidt in particular. At the same time, Charles Xavier is a gifted young scientist who has an ability of his own, powerful telepathy. Since a young age when he encountered the shape-shifting Raven, he’s been pursuing an idealistic vision of finding others like them, people with mutations.


Ideologies are going to clash though, as Klaus Schmidt, now living as Sebastian Shaw has gathered a group of like minded mutants around him, and is manipulating events and people to move the world towards a nuclear war, and an aftermath where it will be the mutants that rise to the top. When it becomes patently clear that conventional methods are ineffective against Shaw, CIA agent Moira MacTaggert recruits Charles Xavier to help her find a group of mutants to stand against Shaw. One of the first is Erik Lehnsherr, and for the first time he finds a friend and an equal in Charles. But he also comes to a crossroads, a choice between Charles’ idealistic and naive vision of mutants and humans co-existing, and the man he hates, Sebastian Shaw’s vision of mutant superiority in a world where mutants are hated and feared by normal humans.

The Disc

Discs like this don’t make it easy to write about. X-Men First Class gets a 2.35:1 widescreen transfer at 1080p, and it may as well be perfect. In terms of detail, clarity, colour reproduction, shadow detail and contrast, I have absolutely no complaints. Apparently it was shot on film, as opposed to digital, and that does tell in the look of the finished product. As a period film it too has a certain gloss and sheen to it that fits in with other films of the sixties, while also managing to look contemporary as well. It’s the same deal with the audio, here a DTS-HD MA 5.1 English track that can’t be faulted. The dialogue is clear, the action makes full use of the soundstage, and the music soundtrack drives the film with style and impact. For the moments when the characters aren’t speaking English, you get player generated subtitles. You also get DD 5.1 Audio Descriptive English, DD 5.1 Czech, Polish and Turkish, and subtitles in these languages and more.

Extras

The disc presents its contents with an animated menu, and incidentally, it’s one of those titles that hold its place in the player’s memory. Searching through the disc, skipping back and forth will bring up a progress bar.

Extras for the film include the isolated score, presented in DD 5.1.

There are 13 deleted scenes on the disc, running to 14 minutes in total and most of them are really extended scenes.

The big extra here is the Children of the Atom documentary, comprising 7 featurettes and running to an hour and ten minutes. It takes us from the genesis of the film, to casting, make-up, costumes, sets and location, production design, visual effects and music. It’s a nice, in depth piece that doesn’t outstay its welcome.

A little bit of foolishness is the Cerebro: Mutant Tracker, where you can play Pokemon with mutants, pressing your remote button when you see a mutant in the 2 minute looped reel, which then opens up film clips and a text biography of the character. Collect them all, and you’ll unlock some exclusive BD Live content.

I couldn’t care less about BD Live content, but there is some on this disc, if you connect your player to the Internet and if Fox haven’t switched off the servers yet.

Conclusion

That was certainly fun, and following X-Men: The Last Stand and Wolverine, certainly a step back in the right direction. It also makes great use of the sixties setting, and the Cuban Missile Crisis to inform its story. X-Men: First Class is nothing if not a cross between a Bond movie and a superhero comic book movie, and it’s a fantastic and inspired blending. As you would expect from an X-Men movie, it’s an allegory for persecution of the different, the fear of not belonging. Just like the first X-Men movie it makes the allegory clear by recreating that memorable scene of the young Erik Lehnsherr in the concentration camp, but it also expands on that event, filling in some more about what happened to him, while introducing this film’s main villain, Sebastian Shaw. This is intercut with Charles Xavier’s childhood, a far more golden affair, albeit somewhat isolated in a mansion where he first runs into Raven, a.k.a. Mystique, and ‘adopts’ her as a sister.


What’s surprising here is that it’s Erik Lehnsherr that is the hero, the protagonist that the audience roots for. After all, who can fault a survivor of the concentration camps and Nazi experimentation for the zeal with which he pursues his revenge? It stands in contrast with the villain Magneto that we know from the first three movies. Erik can certainly work a suit, and he issues all the cold Bond suaveness as he goes about tracking down Sebastian Shaw. In comparison Charles Xavier seems hopelessly naive in his dreams for an integrated society of humans and mutants, and this coupled with a playboy attitude to life makes him seem the weaker character, if no less charismatic. The film does a great job in showing their initial meeting, and the friendship that forms. But as the film progresses, you can’t help but wonder whether Erik would have fallen to the ‘dark side’ had Charles been a little more realistic.


The characters for the most part work well, and the story is engaging, and indeed has touches of the sixties’ Bond movies with the globetrotting and action set pieces. It’s a great film to watch, an excellent thrill ride, and engrossing right till the end. It’s only in comparison with the other X-Men movies that I begin to have a few niggles. One is the character of Hank McCoy, supergenius, who apparently invented everything, which doesn’t always hold up to scrutiny or continuity. The first X-Men film stated that Cerebro was created by Professor X and Magneto, but here it’s a Hank McCoy creation. The second is the rapid pace of the film. You always got the sense that Erik’s friendship with Charles was a long affair, but in First Class it’s over in a matter of weeks, stretching over the Cuban Missile Crisis. Maybe if this had been a trilogy of films, it would have given that friendship the added weight, and the mutual betrayal when it comes would have deeper emotional resonance for the characters. As it is, it’s hard to square the fly by night bromance of First Class with the old friends of X-Men. Then again, maybe Days of Future Past retcons that.


X-Men: First Class isn’t perfect, but it is entertaining, and James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender create wholly engrossing younger versions of the characters that attained such gravitas with Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. Here they have energy, style and swagger which fill the screen. I am looking forward to seeing the collision of the two time periods in Days of Future Past, now that I have seen First Class.