X-Men: First Class Review

It has been many years since I read comic books, but they still have a small place in my heart. I grew up loving superheroes and what they could do. X-Men were some of my first comic books I read.

After seeing X-Men: First Class, I have to say it is the best of all the X-Men movies to date. As great as I found it to be, that is not saying much for it with everything that has made all of the other X-Men movies pretty much horrible. I always wanted to see a X-Men movie with all of the original members and throughout all of the movies that has happen, just not all at once or them knowing each other in some instances. Characters, story arcs, directing, acting and even writing have caused the X-Men movies that I should love to leave a bad taste in my mouth. Most of all, none of them had any consistency with each other, sometimes contradicting each other. For example Wolverine never knew Sabertooth in the first film, yet in X-Men Origins: Wolverine Sabertooth is Wolverine’s brother, making watching all the films in any chronological order completely useless.

X-Men: First Class was directed by Matthew Vaughn, who did a wonderful job with this movie. He kept the plot moving with different characters and where they were going and how they all came together, being able to intertwine the modern feel of the X-Men, but reminding us that it was taking place in the early 60’s with subtle statements from characters and the different environments within different places. It all came together very seamlessly. He was also great at keeping the action, comedy and emotional situations where they should be in their respective places.

The acting was surprisingly great for most of the characters. Most surprisingly was the chemistry between James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender. Both of them whenever in a scene alone together were better than Patrick Stewart and Ian Mckellen in the previous X-Men movies as Professor X and Magneto. Michael Fassbender alone was magnificent. I loved his story arc at the beginning of the film as Magneto setting out to get revenge on Sebastian Shaw. At one time there was going to be an X-Men Origins: Magneto film and they should have made that with this as the plot.

As much as I like a lot of these characters, I really do wish they could have put together the original X-Men crew in this movie. Being that First Class seems to forget the other films as much as the other films have forgotten about each other, this seemed like a perfect time to put the original team together and kind of make this the remaking of the X-Men series in movie form. Unfortunately that opportunity was wasted for what some must have thought to be more interesting characters and story.

Final Score: 4.5/5