The very first scene of X-Men: First Class recreates the opening scene of the original X-Men. But then the story continues, and we find out what happened NEXT.

That captures the basic ethos of this film: filling in the gaps. X-Men: First Class isn’t about telling a new story; it’s about telling the first chapter of the one we already know. To do so, the film reaches back in time to the ‘60s, detailing the beginnings of mutantkind as a cohesive entity.

Dramatis Personae

X-Men: First Class revolves around five major characters. Because this is the past, we know two of them very, very well. We know, but do not yet understand, a third. We recognize (maybe) a fourth. The fifth we know, but may not recognize. The sixth greets the audience for the first time in this film. The interplay between these characters makes up the best portions of the film: the beginning and the end.

Magneto

Erik Lehnsherr, the man who will become Magneto, returns as a focal point of the film. More than any previous X-Men film, X-Men: First Class tells the story of the Mutant Master of Magnetism. And this version of Magneto views the world very differently than his future self. This Magneto believes himself to be alone in the world. His only purpose is to hunt Nazis.

You have to admit, International Nazi-hunter Magneto is just about the coolest character pitch Fox has ever offered up. But that’s just the starting point of the film. The Magneto we all know begins to take shape when Erik meets Charles Xavier and discovers the existence of mutants. The existence of others like him upends Erik’s whole world, and gives him a purpose behind revenge. Unfortunately, this new purpose comes with the same old method of problem-solving.



Michael Fassbender fills some big shoes taking over this role from Ian McKellen. But he does fill them. Whereas McKellen played the older, focused Magneto, Fassbender plays a man whose rage still runs freely. It provides nice context to the earlier depiction.

Professor X

Charles Xavier also returns. After all, Charles and Erik represent two sides of the same coin. Or rather, they will. But just as Erik Lehnsherr has yet to assume his final form as Magneto, Charles Xavier has yet to become the calmly noble Professor X we know and love. This Xavier resembles a goofy, ‘60s era playboy. He tries to woo coeds with canned, surface-level explanations of genetic mutation. But he still possesses the seeds of the man he will become.

James McAvoy performs admirably, but he does not receive as much time to explore the role as Fassbender does. The performance works well, but it’s a little underwritten for such a pivotal role.

Mystique

Raven AKA Mystique also appears in this film, straddling the line between the two men’s ideologies. Jennifer Lawrence takes over for Rebecca Romijn. We discover more about her in this one film than we did in the three previous entries into the franchise. For instance, in one of the most blatant retcons of all time, we find out that Mystique grew up as the surrogate sister of Charles Xavier. A large portion of the emotional content in X-Men: First Class arises from her entirely reasonable problems with Xavier’s incrementalism.

Unfortunately, while she receives much more focus as a character, Mystique is still relegated as secondary to the men. She’s wavering between Xavier and Magneto, with some romantic inclinations towards beast, and that’s all she gets. She lacks actual agency. Accordingly, Jennifer Lawrence cannot spin straw into gold. She’s a fine actress, but she can’t overcome a weak script.

Moira MacTaggert

Rose Byrne plays Moira MacTaggert, previously glimpsed briefly in X-Men: The Last Stand. Moira isn’t treated much better than Mystique. Her very first scene requires her to strip to her underwear to infiltrate the Hellfire Club. She’s like Peggy Carter, if Peggy Carter’s scenes primarily revolved around getting demeaned by men.

Beast

Nicholas Hoult puts in respectable work as a much younger Hank McCoy AKA Beast. However, he has far, far less focus than the previous four characters. His entire arc consists of angsting over his big feet, then accidentally giving himself his trademark bestial form in an attempt to look “normal.” The whole thing is even blander than it sounds.

Black King of the Hellfire Club

Finally, we have Kevin Bacon as Sebastian Shaw. Shaw serves as the main antagonist for the film. He first appears as a doctor in Auschwitz, where he kills Magneto’s mother. He reappears twenty years later with designs for world domination. But honestly, he’s boring. Bacon plays a generic megalomaniac. Shaw wants to start nuclear war and achieve mutant domination, and that’s all there is to him.

X-Men: First Class- The First Class

At roughly the 45 minute mark, all the aforementioned characters have made their appearance. The film seems prepared to focus up on the cast and their struggle to prevent all out war.

And then the film adds four more characters, creating the titular First Class.

Xavier’s first cadre of X-Men mostly lack the raw charisma of the four leads. When trying to describe them, the words “eminently forgettable” come to mind. Of the group heretofore unnamed, only Alex Summers makes any further appearances in the franchise. Darwin made the greatest impact on me of all of them, and he dies halfway through the film.

The antagonists not named Sebastian Shaw fare little better. January Jones plays Emma Frost, and I personally believe she’s miscast. Jones certainly looks the part, but she lacks the feel. I don’t hold that against her, as it’s a tall order, doubly so considering Frost is barely a secondary character in this film. Emma Frost possesses more raw presence than almost any other X-character, making her one of the harder superheroes to adapt. To be fair to Jones, the biggest issue is that Frost is so subordinate to Shaw. Honestly, the other mutant antagonists don’t merit mentioning as they don’t even have real speaking lines. They serve as muscle and little more.

The Story of X-Men: First Class

The narrative arc of this film traces distinct highs and lows. Personally, I suspect this is because the writers cobbled the script together with parts from a failed project. You see, once upon a time Fox intended to make a film called X-Men Origins: Magneto. That hypothetical film told the story of how young Erik Lehnsherr became the powerful and charismatic Magneto. This film would have seen Magneto hunting the Nazis who tormented him at Auschwitz, with his bloodlust bringing him into conflict with Charles Xavier.

You may notice that this sounds familiar.

The Magneto portions of the story in X-Men: First Class, presumably culled from the earlier Magneto script, make up most of the best moments of the film. I think everything else feels like an afterthought because it very literally was. The parts that make this an X-Men film were added later.

Finding More Mutants

The weakest portions of the story involve the secondary cast that make up the titular First Class. Due to the odd pacing of the film, none of them appear until after the first 45 minute, and then all four are introduced in a three minute montage. They get a dedicated scene showing off their powers, and then they disappear for another twenty minutes. And THEN one of them gets killed and another switches sides.

I’m sorry, I have to complain about this. In X-Men: First Class, the unfortunate trope of killing the black dude first gets invoked so hard that it applies to a dude whose actual superpower is not being able to die. If you don’t get why I’m upset, check out the Wikipedia page on Darwin. What they did to the character in this movie is the equivalent of having Wolverine die from injuries sustained in a car accident.

The story doesn’t get better from there. The world slowly approaches the brink of nuclear war, and the nascent X-Men retire to upstate New York. Beast and Mystique engage in a terrible and pointless romantic subplot. Every member of the team masters their powers over a five minute montage. Even in real time, these events can’t take place over more than a handful of days because they occur during the Cuban Missile Crisis. It’s incredibly rushed and inorganic.

But oh, what a payoff.

Nuclear Brinksmanship

The big finale occurs in the midst of the standoff between the US and Russia. Or rather, THE standoff. When I said the events occurred during the Cuban Missile Crisis, I used that example very intentionally. Shaw attempts to use the event to incite nuclear war between the US and Russia. The newly minted X-Men arrive to stop him. A tense showdown evolves into an all-out superhuman brawl as the X-Men engage Shaw’s companions. Meanwhile, Magneto engages Shaw directly.

That second part results in arguably the best scene of the film. Magneto attacks Shaw alone, and finds himself insufficient for the task. He carefully manipulates Shaw until he can remove Shaw’s mental protections, allowing Xavier to assist. But when Xavier has used his mental powers, Magneto goes off-script.

Birth of the Brotherhood

Magneto never cared to stop Shaw’s plans. He just wanted to stop Shaw. So Magneto kills Shaw, echoing the words Shaw first said to him in Auschwitz. And then he supplants him. Erik ascends to his destined place as the face of mutant revolution.

Meanwhile, the US and Russia have been busy. They don’t know what’s happening, but the very potentiality of mutant ascendancy has them jumpy. Both sides fire their weapons at the triumphant X-Men.

Magneto turns the weapons right back.

Xavier tries to stop him.

Xavier succeeds in stopping Erik, but loses the use of his legs due to an injury gained in the struggle.

Lines are drawn, sides are chosen, and everybody goes their separate ways. Other than the fact that Mystique goes with Magneto while Beast and Moira go with Xavier, none of it matters. You won’t see most of these characters again.

The Mutant Metaphor Ignored

X-Men: First Class is completely disinterested in exploring the mutant metaphor in anything other than the most cursory of terms. The one piece of lip service they pay to the original allegory of mutants-as-queer-folks comes when Xavier accidentally outs Hank as a mutant. Hank directly references Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell when explaining why he never told his superior about his abilities.

Now, I can think of a few reasons why adapting that particular version of the mutant metaphor to the ‘60s might be hard. But if that was the case, why not just revert it to the very first version? The earliest version of the X-Men were an allegory for the Civil Rights movement in the ‘60s. Explore that!

Production Design

The visual effects hold up surprisingly well, with a few exceptions. Everything involving Banshee and flying looks awful. Very obvious green screen work. Other than that, the CGI looks fine.

The costume design, however, makes for a bit of a mixed bag. All the period piece elements are immaculate. It’s the real superhero costumes that leave a lot to be desired. The X-Men uniforms just do not work. They go for a much closer adaptation of the comic-accurate suits than they should have, and they just don’t look good.

The makeup work also doesn’t live up to expectations. Beast and Mystique look worse than they did back in X-Men: The Last Stand, and There’s a very artificial quality to the hair in particular that I just couldn’t get past.

There’s some kind of weird audio mixing issue with Beast after he takes the serum and transforms. His speech sounds flat and off. It’s obvious that they had to dub his lines back in, probably because of difficulties with his makeup/prosthetics.

I forgot most of this film’s music. But I remember the pieces they made for Magneto. No matter what instrument they use to play it, each piece contains the same motif. It brilliantly encapsulates the rage and the power Erik Lehnsherr holds inside.

Conclusion

X-Men: First Class consists of two movies. The movie about Magneto Ranks among the best in the genre. The actual X-Men movie wrapped around it ranks as one of the most forgettable. Unfortunately, the lows drag this film down too much for it to make the top of my list. Accordingly, I’m putting X-Men: First Class towards the middle of the X-Men Rankings.

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