X-Men: First Class - Retrospective Film Review

X-Men: First Class is an entertaining story based on Marvel’s popular comic book property. The film is a big budget project, but it’s the acting talent that makes First Class successful. James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Jennifer Lawrence are great actors and, in their respective roles, deliver performances that help elevate the film to a level that transcends the somewhat forgettable slew of comic book films that have become part and parcel of the American Summer movie season since the beginning of the new millennium.

The film’s story shows the formation of Charles Xavier’s ‘X-Men’ and Erik Lensherr’s ‘Mutant Brotherhood’ and, at its core, is a story an individual’s right to exist free of persecution. This theme has always been the core of the ‘X-Men’ stories, both on film and in the original comic book source material, where ‘Mutant’ powers were a euphemism for the real-world challenges of racism, sexism and religious discrimination. ‘First Class’ is quite overt about its theme. Right from the opening scene, which shows a young Erik Lensherr in a German concentration camp during World War II, the movie does not shy away from depicting both the physical and mental abuse being inflicted upon the film’s main characters. The young Erik’s persecution by Nazi Doctor Sebastian Shaw, played with scenery-chewing glee by Kevin Bacon, is the basis for all that follows and plays directly into the story’s climax. The older Lensherr, played by the versatile & excellent Michael Fassbender, is all consumed in his quest to track down Shaw. His quest for vengeance brings him into contact with Charles Xavier, played by McAvoy, who tries to help Lensherr balance his anger with a desire to show Mutants are humanity’s evolution to something better than what they have been.

At its core, ‘First Class’ is about Charles and Erik working together to find Mutants and convince them to join the fight against Shaw and his efforts to ignite World War III. Lensherr’s underlying motivation is to kill Shaw and avenge his mother’s death. The first act tells the story of how they meet and Xavier’s efforts to convince Erik that life can be good. Despite the Professor’s best efforts, Fassbender plays Erik in such a manner that the audience knows that Charles hasn’t convinced him to take the course of action that’s best for all concerned and not just for himself. When the two are shown working together, the film has some its best moments. The vignettes that depict their recruiting efforts are cleverly done and some of their exchanges provide the film with cross-franchise continuity that helps to clarify and rectify some of the problems created by previous entries.

The time spent establishing the relationships in the first and second acts sees the final act of the film dedicated largely to action and pushing the story to the confrontation between Fassbender’s Lensherr and Kevin Bacon’s Shaw. The film’s writers, of which there were six credited, cleverly use the real historical incident of the Cuban missile crisis as the smoke-screen for Shaw’s plan for world domination and sees the convergence of all of the film’s characters in one place at one time without it seeming forced and manipulative. Without ruining the ending of the film, it’s relatively safe to say that Fassbender’s Lensherr exacts his vengeance with a degree of precision that is consistent with his actions throughout this story, but is also consistent with the older Ian McKellen-version of Magneto from the original trilogy of ‘X-Men’ movies.

Director Matthew Vaughan, who had previously walked away from the chance to direct ‘X-Men 3’, was fortunate to secure James McAvoy for the role of the younger Xavier. McAvoy is a seriously good actor and the combination with Fassbender is a believable pairing in light of their older counter-parts from the previous films, played respectively by Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. In addition to McAvoy and Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence brings the younger version of Raven/Mystique to life. Rebecca Romajin played the character in the first three films, but she was always secondary to the focus on McKellen’s Magneto. Lawrence’s character takes centre-stage early in the film; meeting Charles Xavier for the first time when both are just children. She becomes a pseudo-sister to him as the pair takes comfort in their respective mutant abilities.

Kevin Bacon and Nicholas Hoult stand-out in their supporting roles as Shaw and Hank McCoy, who becomes the bright blue Mutant ‘Beast’. Kevin Bacon plays Shaw as a pre-cursor to ‘Magneto’ with one major difference. Magneto’s motivation is use Mutant powers to protect their own kind whereas Shaw is just plain evil and aspires to world domination through the control of Mutant powers. This one-dimensional characterisation does make Shaw seem a touch like the Bond villains of the 1960s and 1970s, whose raison d’etre usually involved new and unique ways to use nuclear weapons to destroy the world! The design of ‘First Class’ suggests a deliberate effort to pay homage to the Bond films, with the impressive set designs utilising large cavernous spaces that provide enough room to fit the ego of a budding megalomaniac!

Nicholas Hoult plays the younger version of Hank McCoy, who was played by Kelsey Grammer in ‘The Last Stand’. The focus of the ‘Beast’ arc in ‘First Class’ focusses on Hank’s experiments to reverse his mutation, the moral dilemma it creates in his relationships with other Mutants and, ultimately, the effect it has on speeding-up his transformation into his ‘Beast’ alter-ego. Hoult brings a youthful exuberance, naivety and insecurity to the younger Hank.

The challenge faced by ‘First Class’ was always how it was going to reference the three ‘X-Men’ movies and the stand-alone ‘Wolverine’ film. While it acknowledges many of the established characters and story arcs, the film is not a slave to its predecessors. The writers wisely choose to not retrofit any of the ‘X-Men III’ story and also ignore any implications that the stand-alone ‘Wolverine’ may have had on their story. The success of the story comes from the focus on the relationships, especially between Charles, Erik and Raven. Their story is representative of the greater drama at play in ‘First Class’, where there is ‘Light’ and there is ‘Dark’, but there’s also a hell of a lot of grey in between.