X-Men: First Class is a return to the comic’s roots and it’s so good that it will make you forget all that came before.
Launching a realistic superhero series is tricky. Despite the mainstream popularity of the superhero genre in movies, there are still limits to what the general viewing audience is willing to accept. As superhero franchises get long in the tooth, they tend to loosen up and start exploring the more extreme aspects of the genre. Because the fringe elements of superheroes are not considered when planning the franchise, the movies also tend to become muddled and incoherent. For examples, see the Spider-Man and X-Men series. This is why it’s become fashionable to reboot the franchise and the second time around include all those disparate elements from the beginning.
What First Class does right is give the series a sense of history. Although the various characters are important, they take a back seat to the go-go 60s, government paranoia, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. We begin with Erik Lensherr (Michael Fassbender as Magneto) in the grip of Nazi scientist Dr. Klaus Schmidt (THE Kevin Bacon as Sebastian Shaw). Paralleling Lensherr’s nightmarish upbringing is Charles Xavier (James McAvoy as Professor X) adopting a homeless shapeshifter named Raven Darkholme (Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique). Xavier’s research in mutations is eventually co-opted by Moira MacTaggert (Rose Byrne), a CIA agent who believes that mutants are a threat. Division X is launched to counter the nefarious warmongering of Sebastian Shaw (SPOILER CLASS: actually Klaus Schmidt). Xavier and Lensherr’s worlds collide when they converge on Shaw, who escapes. Their alliance is one of convenience; they both want to capture Shaw for different reasons.
The movie pivots on their differing ethos: Xavier is a horndog academic with noble ideas; Lensherr is a bloodthirsty fugitive hellbent on revenge. Who is right? It doesn't matter in the end. There are mutants and non-mutants, pro-government and against, those who remember the lessons of a world war and those who are doomed to repeat it. It's all about justifying the side you choose.
As Shaw inches the Soviet Union and United States toward war, X-Men: First Class takes the gloves off. Mutants are murdered (those mutants you don't recognize? Yeah, those are the ones), vengeance is served, and CIA agents drop hundreds of feet to their deaths.
First Class has fun tweaking our knowledge of future events in the X-Men universe. It all culminates in the Cuban Missile Crisis. My father was on the flagship of the fleet positioned to block during the Crisis, so the events have a special resonance with me.
Academic vs. warrior, U.S. vs. Russia, human vs. mutant…First Class manages to have its mutated cake and eat it too – by setting the series in the past it takes world-shaking events and balances them on the head of an emotional pin. The first three installments pale in comparison.
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