one of the best superhero films ever!
Starring James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Kevin Bacon. Directed by Matthew Vaughn
As far as superhero films go, the “X-Men” series has always been among the better ones, despite the fact that the last two films in the series, 2006’s “X-Men: The Last Stand” and 2009’s “X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” were among the worst superhero films ever made, with cheesy characters and horrible plots. “X-Men: First Class” is essentially the “Batman Begins” to this movie franchise, and surprisingly enough, it’s not only the best of the “X-Men” movies, but one of the best superhero films, period.
Other great Marvel superheroes like Spider-Man, Iron Man, and the recently released Thor have succeeded because the characters were translated directly from the comic books to the screen with respect, instead of just taking what was needed and making an embarrassing mess (read: “X-Men Origins”, the second Fantastic Four movie, and “Spider-Man 3” as examples.) Spider-Man was just a nerdy kid who suddenly became a superhero, and the first two films showed perfectly how he dealt with it. Iron Man did not treat itself as a mere superhero film, portraying villains who actually existed in real life such as terrorists and greedy corporate executives, as well as casting the perfect actor to play Iron Man.
But X-Men is the first superhero film that could actually work even if there were no superheroes in it. Even “The Dark Knight,” considered to be the best superhero film because of Heath Ledger’s amazing performance as the Joker, would not work without Batman. But if you had no mutants in this film, it would still work perfectly without the X-Men.
The story revolves around two mutants, or people who gain superpowers as soon as they reach puberty, named Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr. The movie briefly shows their childhoods, with Xavier neglected and alone inside his parents’ giant mansion, and Lehnsherr as a prisoner inside a Nazi concentration camp. Xavier meets another mutant named Raven, who can shapeshift to look like other people. Lehnsherr discovers his control of metal while his parents are being dragged off by Nazi guards and he pulls a barbed wire door apart in a desperate effort to get to them. Things get even worse for Erik as a Nazi doctor named Sebastian Shaw, another mutant, sees this and kills Erik’s mother while trying to get him to use his power again.
The rest of the film revolves around Erik and Xavier twenty years later, along with several other mutants, trying to stop Shaw from starting a nuclear war, which ends up being the real-life Cuban Missile Crisis.
The film is extremely creative with its story by using real life history to create the plot. Though X-Men Origins tried this to an extent, this film does a much better job by actually trying to preserve some realism in the process.
The best actors in the film are James McAvoy (Wanted) who plays Xavier, Jennifer Lawrence (Winter’s Bone) who plays Raven, Michael Fassbender plays Erik, and the best one by far, Kevin Bacon as Sebastian Shaw. Shaw is, by far, the best supervillain since the Joker. He is actually both scary and funny at the same time. He casually offers Erik a chocolate bar before killing his mother in the beginning, using his mutant power (absorbing and releasing energy) to place an energy ball down the throat of another mutant, causing him to explode from the inside (just as an example.) Every time Shaw appeared, the movie got better.
This film is not perfect. It has several flaws which don’t detract too much but are still noticeable. The biggest flaw is that according to the comic books (and I only learned this after seeing the movie,) most of the characters in this film were not alive in the 1960s, which is when the bulk of the film takes place. A slightly more interesting fact is that one of the characters changed in gender and race, and is involved in the worst part of the movie (this character literally has flaming spit balls as a power).
Other than that, the flaws are tiny. Some hammy acting, a couple of stupid plot points, stuff so tiny it doesn’t really do anything to the film.
Another cool fact about this movie: it was directed by Matthew Vaughn, who also directed the extremely funny superhero film “Kick-Ass.”
In conclusion, this is currently the best superhero film of the year, and you’ll have to wait till the Captain America movie comes out to see if it is the best superhero film of the year. See this film!
Rating: A-
