X-Men First Class

It's here. Finally, the next chapter of the X-Men saga has arrived - perhaps the most highly anticipated one of all time so far, and one that was sorely needed after the train wreck that was X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

First Class is the origin story of Magneto (played by Michael Fassbender) and Professor X (James McAvoy), before they ever took their mutant names and were known only as Erik Lensherr and Charles Xavier. Set amidst the Cuban Missile Crisis era, the film explains how the two first met, how they created the very first mutant special-ops team, and finally how the two came to be arch nemesis.

In all honesty, I was skeptical when I first heard that McAvoy would be stepping into the shoes previously worn by the legendary Patrick Stewart. However, my doubts were soon washed away, as I realized that this Charles Xavier is not the Charles Xavier that we are all familiar with - this is Charles Xavier before he became Professor X. He's young, cheeky, and he makes mistakes - his greatest one being the failure to understand how living through an event like the holocaust can influence a young man's psyche. McAvoy gives us a refreshing perspective on a character that many of us presume to know. In the same vein, Michael Fassbender has taken the character of Magneto (formerly played by Sir Ian McKellen) from being a slightly sinister old man with a funny helmet, to a young man who's heart and soul are filled with rage over the atrocities that have taken place against him. This is touched on briefly in the past few movies, but it's only now that we're able to understand the extent of Magneto's contempt for humankind. Fassbender's performance is truly masterful.

Director Matthew Vaughn (of Kick-Ass fame)has taken the X-Men to a whole other level completely. Vaughn has transcended Hollywood's hard-on for visual effects driven movies and cheesy one-liners (so if you're looking for dialogue gold like "you know what happens to a toad when it's struck by lightning?" sorry, ain't gonna find it here) and given the film something that is previously unheard of from a comic-book movie - character development, and a storyline that we actually care about. Let's face it, while it's all well and good to see two factions of mutants go to war with each other, we don't REALLY care because well, we're not mutants. It doesn't resonate with us. By taking real-world events (the cuban missile crisis) and inserting a bit of mutant flair to it, even though it's clearly a fictional re-imagining, Vaughn has ensured that we're that much more likely to connect with what's happening on screen, and in turn causes us to be more emotionally involved. Furthermore, Vaughn's decision to use a group of mutants that are relatively unknown (with the obvious exceptions of Magneto, Professor X, Mystique and Beast) allows the viewer to stop worrying about the accuracy of the continuity of the character (par example: "Deadpool doesn't have fucking lasers for eyes!")and just enjoy the mutants for how cool they are (except for the guy sitting beside me who thought it was the height of disgrace that Havok a.k.a. Alex Summers is now Scott Summers' older brother instead of vice versa. Shut up, you moron.)

To sum it all up, X-Men First Class has got everything: comedy, romance, action, oh yeah, and some delightful cameo appearances. If you're a fan of the X-Men, go see this movie. If you're a fan of movies, go see this movie. If you're at the theatre and you're trying to decide what to watch because you came woefully unprepared, go see this movie. Basically, go see this movie.

8.5/10