Friday, June 3, 2011

X-Men: First Class did two very distinct things to my perception of the comic book film. One, the film makes it very obvious that comic book films can be fun and emotional and assuredly celebrate the inherent silliness that exists within the comic book medium without sacrificing an ounce of their quality. And two, it clicked in to place an idea that has always lingered at the edge of my enjoyment of comic book films: these movies are inherently silly, and the only way to fully enjoy them is to drop our pretenses of absolute seriousness and indulge the fact that we’re watching fully costumed, super-powered humans blast energy rings from their chest. The fact that the fourth film in a comic book film franchise can do this is not only impressive, it’s downright amazing. What we are hopefully watching is a reinvention of the franchise, a new take on characters bogged down by continuity. Matthew Vaughn has made a film that, quite honestly, reinvents the wheel of the superhero film.

Movie Review - X-Men: First Class

We’ve seen the X-Men before. A group of mutated humans, gifted from birth with super-human powers that allow them to do, well, a plethora of things, teamed together to fight evil and oppression. X-Men: First Class preludes the idea, showing the origins of Professor X (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and the small team of mutants they bring together to help save the world. Vaughn’s take isn’t your well-tread cinematic X-Men though as he places his heroes in the 1960s, unwilling pawns of the great historical forces that shook America to it’s core. In Vaughn’s world, the X-Men are super-powered G-Men, brought together by the polarized duo of young Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr. And the film doesn’t step away from it’s spy roots. Especially in the first section of the film, where Erik Lensherr James Bond’s his way across the world, dispatching those who killed his parents and tortured him in his youth, the film feels like a mutant spy thriller. Vaughn deftly grafts the superhero genre in to the spy film, with all the wit and fun of the latter fully intact.

And that’s what pushes X-Men: First Class in to a different realm than the superhero films that have preceded it: fun. Vaughn deftly balances the inherent silliness in the concept of superheroes with the darker, weirder issues at the heart of the X-Men, and the film soars because of it. There is a dark world that exists in every character and Vaughn exposes this but never loses sight of the amazing opportunity he has to simply entertain. There’s a strong hint of Grant Morrison in Vaughn’s take on the X-Men, and had me grinning from ear-to-ear over and over again.

This version of the X-Men is an actors film and Vaughn has two of the best young kids in the business leading his crew:James McAvoy and perhaps my favorite actor working today, Michael Fassbender. McAvoy’s Xavier is a super-gifted genius, a ladies man with a soft heart and Fassbender’s Magneto is everything else -  a driven, anger-fueled man teetering dangerously on the edge of being a monster. Fassbender is a brilliant actor and in every frame of the film he oozes with the pain of his past. The character thrives in the hands of Fassbender, and the Magneto we’re introduced to at film’s end is a fully realized character shaped by events both old and recent.

I could go on and on and on about this film - Kevin Bacon’s creepy Sebastien Shaw, the moral quandries of Professor X, the action sequences, the score, the finale - but all I need to say is this: this is the X-Men film you’ve been waiting for. Now get out there and see it.

- Noah Sanders -



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