X-Men: First Class

Shaken?  Stirred? – Magneto is James Bond!?!?

Swift shot: I promise not to throw out some cheesy “X-cellent” or “X-quisite” or even “X-ceptional” in this review, it’s too tempting to play on that – and this latest film, directed by Matthew “Kick Ass” Vaughn stands alone yet masterfully incorporates the elements that made me love the original X-Men films.  Vaughn uses his own style and throws nods to some great film-makers throughout to deliver an interesting, entertaining summer revenge flick.

Opening in a familiar place, Poland 1944, with a familiar scene, young Erik Lehnsherr (German for feudal lord – Bill Milner) watches as the Nazis drag his parents away – he is writhing in emotional agony, pain and fear, as he wills the iron gates to bend just outside his reach.  His little scene captures the attention of a Nazi “doctor”.  The doctor turns Erik, a mere child, into his play thing, augmenting his talents in the harshest of methods, commenting that while he loathes “these Nazi methods” he can’t argue with their results.  I won’t give anything away here, because it is an emotionally difficult scene with some incredible cinematographic juxtaposition – you’ll see what I mean.

Meanwhile in Westchester, NY, at the same time, a young Charles Xavier (Laurence Belcher) makes the acquaintance of fellow mutant, Raven (Morgan Lily) and an odd relationship is formed.  The two kindred “freaks” are never far apart after that, at least not in this film.

Most of the action takes place where we see the two children, now young men, in 1962, in the midst of the darkest days of the Cold War.  Erik has one agenda, bloody vengeance against the Nazi Doctor who, in essence, created him.  Xavier is a young professor, having earned his doctorate in genetic studies at Oxford University – as he is being congratulated by his, ever close, friend Raven – he remarks, “I am not a professor until I have students”.  Thus foreshadowing his many adventures to come as leader of his own “X-Men”.

Erik, played ruthlessly by Michael Faasbender, extracts a lead from a twisted Geneva banker to begin his pursuit of the evil Nazi doctor.  Following that lead to Argentina, he finds two unlucky Germans, one a pig-farmer and the other a tailor.  Oddly enough, these two have exactly the information Erik seeks, because they are actually Nazis – a scene that is uber transparent and painfully (emphasis on the pain) punctuated.  I know I compared Erik to Bond in my tag, but in actuality, Erik is less about finesse, he prefers cruelty to get results – a trick he learned from a Nazi doctor.  [Fans of Inglorious Basterds will recognize the subtle nod to QT’s table talk scene, also with Faasbender]

Meanwhile in Oxford, Xavier (James McAvoy) is using his skills to hit on chicks, much to the chagrin of Raven who is tired of his lame pickup line “Mutant and proud”.  It is also during this time that CIA Agent MacTaggert played by Mrs. Everywhere in 2011 – Rose Byrne, has learned of an international plot to see to it that American ICBMs are placed in Turkey, which will likely incite World War III.   While conducting some brief under-cover work she discovers that so-called “mutants” exist as she sees Emma Frost (January Jones) turn into solid diamond when she crashes a Hellfire Club shindig.  Oh, and now is a good time to insert a bit of “don’t say I didn’t warn you” stuff – hearing McAvoy, as the future Professor X say shit like groovy more than zero times was enough for me.  Yes, Vaughn, we get it, this film is set in 1962, enough of making Xavier look like a weenie – if you were going for the two sides of the same coin comparison with Xavier vs. Magneto – it was overdone.

Things finally come to a head as Erik and Xavier are both pursuing the same man, I feel I would be ruining things here a bit – but, minor spoiler alert coming, the Nazi doctor is Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) who is the mutant leader of the Hellfire Club and has the power to absorb kinetic energy, and those few scenes where he shows off with this power were done extremely well.  Erik, alone, quickly discovers he is not able to handle these villains without assistance.  Reluctantly, he agrees to work with Xavier to end Shaw’s influence on the world stage.

Not only does Erik agree to help Xavier, he agrees to recruit with him, and in the BEST scene of the movie, there is a cameo from one of the past films – giving that away would be a geek capital crime!  The recruiting sequences and the team-building sequences were necessary.  They didn’t really tack on too long, but it was close, each new recruit brought something fresh to the story – while at least one annoying gnat of a character deserved a place right on my windshield next to the freakin thousand love bugs I slaughtered last month.  I didn’t even know her character existed in the Marvel universe, of course, I am not the expert either.

There was a, vomitorium, love-story taking place in the film as well, as Hank McCoy (AKA Beast – Nicholas Hoult) and Raven (AKA Mystique – Jennifer Lawrence) approached their mutant abilities as both a curse and a gift, respectively.  Then the film gets really James Bond, when the “agents” head to a Russian Military Retreat to discover more about the sinister plot of the villains on hand there, to launch the human world into a global war – killing the humans and taking their rightful place as leaders on the Darwinian scale.

A new character was introduced, Azazel, I didn’t know much about him before the film, but afterwards I was incredibly curious and once you see him and his abilities you’ll know why my curiosity was piqued.  In one scene he has a neat little method for dispatching an entire compound of government agents one by one – their last moments on earth were filled with terror – plus Azazel is apparently a closet fan of the 80’s band The Weather Girls.  [Yes, that last line has two hidden messages, have fun finding them]

The film really doesn’t disappoint much; it had moments that were a tad hokey and at times, because this was a team-building saga, it got melodramatic.  But, the story was well told, the characters were well developed, and even Kevin Bacon was somehow strangely believable as Sebastian Shaw.  Let me put it this way, if by the end of the film you DON’T want Shaw dead, I’d be surprised.  To me, that is all an actor’s job really is, make me love or hate your character and not you as an actor.  Most of the cast pulled this off well.

The effects and art team did a magnificent job portraying the tension of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, using several moments from actual history while penciling in fictional characters that were seamlessly paneled into the historic archive . . . if only in an alternate realm of imagination. The climax of the film was a bit trite and predictable, but I liked how the team actually used their powers in tandem to get results, something the comics do a lot, emphasizing that each member of the team plays a pivotal role in mission accomplishment.  So, yes, it was an anti-climatic ending, pitting the humans vs. all the mutants, good or evil.  But, as the movie’s title indicates, this is the first class of Professor X, so I was expecting the end to be a beginning.  Still, the final crowning scene where Magneto dons his helmet was authentic to the comic books but it made the character less scary to behold.

Overall you are going to like X-Men: First Class; it deserves a slot in your Marvel collection.   If comic book films aren’t your thing, you’ll probably still enjoy the James Bond type story arc, maybe you will like seeing the X-Men’s beginnings, watch as they fumble around with their powers and form relationships and determine why they fight, who they fight for and learn why Magneto becomes a villain.  To me, it was just an enjoyable reprieve from my mundane, non-mutant, existence – which is all I want in a film like this anyway . . . to escape reality.