X-Men: First Class ~ A Geekcentric Review

In all honesty, I was NOT excited about the idea of X-Men First Class when the rumor mill started churning last year. Xavier and Magneto when they were much younger? We saw how well that worked with Obi-Wan and Darth Vader. Yet as the trailers started to roll out, this reviewer, much like the rest of the world, started to see the potential awesomeness. Potential that was fully realized…well, mostly.

Setting

I’m fairly certain that there could not have been a better backdrop for this film. The Cuban Missile Crisis orchestrated by mutants is such a wonderful idea. I am a big fan of alternate history, and the boys at Fox and Marvel did it right.

Plot

Without too many spoilers, the evil Sebastian Shaw (expertly embodied by Kevin Bacon…more on that later) wants to start World War Three so the humans destroy themselves and the mutants can take over. Now I know what you’re thinking…

”Jason, a bad-guy wanting to destroy the humans…isn’t that the plot of all the X-Men movies?”

Yeah…more or less, in terms of diverse story and brand new concepts, there’s not much here to go on.

They try very hard, sometimes too hard, to maintain continuity with the previous X-Films, and there are a few errors, but they are minimal and nit-picky (go ahead Fanboys, have your field day.) I will say that the foreshadowing jokes about Xavier potentially losing his hair lost all their humor after the first time…the rest were just frivolous.

Enjoy your cameos, for there are a few, and don’t let anyone spoil them for you.  You’ll thank me later.  Oh…and don’t bother waiting to the end of the credits for Marvel’s hallmark awesome teaser scene. It’s not there.

Characters

The casting in this film was SPOT ON. James McAvoy’s Xavier and Michael Fassbender’s Erik Lehnsherr were the right kind of wonderful. They each brought their own charm and flavor to the characters but never took liberties that you wouldn’t find from Sirs Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. The kids who made up the “first class” were nothing special, save for the goofy charm of Nicholas Hoult as Dr. Hank McCoy. On the opposite end of the spectrum, perhaps the most important muteen (that’s right…mutant teen), Mystique, played by the Academy Award Nominated Actress Jennifer Lawrence, left a flat and dull impression. I don’t know if she was phoning it in or if she was being held back by the powers-that-be, but I expected more.

As a life-long fan of Kevin Bacon, I was giddy to see that his role as the film’s primary villain was done tastefully. Part Lex Luthor and part Ian McKellan’s Magneto, Sebastian Shaw was a great Bond-esque villain who truly wanted to watch the world burn. For some reason I am reminded of his role as the sadistic prison guard in “Sleepers” as he plays a big role in shaping the future of the Magneto we know from the other X-Films.

Pace

Really…REALLY…good. Unlike the first X-men which took forever to get going, or X3 which was pawned off as one long money-shot, First Class developed the characters and story at a pace that was not only believable, but easy to follow. Usually when a movie reaches the two-hour mark this reviewer is ready for the big finale, but in X-Men: First Class, it never felt long to me. You spend so much energy and invest so heavily in the characters that the amount of time spent in your comfy stadium seating is darn-near perfect.

Final Thoughts

X-men: First Class is easily the best comic book movie of the year, and quite possibly the best since 2008’s The Dark Knight. This film has set the bar for Green Lantern and Captain America, and if that bar is anywhere close to being met, then this summer might go down in history as one of the best. Go see X-men, enjoy it, take it in…Nerdy movies this good don’t come around very often.

And of course, who can forget my favorite out-of-context quote of the film:  “Go fuck yourselves.”