Blogorium Review: X-Men - First Class

 I get why people like X-Men: First Class; it's a better movie than X-Men Origins: Wolverine, it's a more consistently entertaining film than the first or third X-film, and compared to many comic book movies designed to launch a franchise, it manages to tell a self contained story without leaving a ton of loose ends it only intends to deal with in another movie (and another movie after that, etc - call it Tron Legacy syndrome if you like).

 On the other hand, I understand why people don't like X-Men: First Class; it's a movie without a reason for being, one that, generally speaking, lacks tension for certain characters. While the acting is good in some roles, it's awful in others, matched by what seem to be hastily rendered cgi effects at times. The film attempts to piggyback off of the public's fascination with Mad Men, sometimes successfully but often distractingly. The biggest problem with the film is that one can't help but feel like we're seeing a B-roll X-Men because the producers, writers, and director were unable to use actual members of the "first class" of Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Mutants and still retain the canon of the series (not that this stops them in one case).

 Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender), who has the ability to manipulate metal objects, is a survivor of Nazi concentration camps during World War II, and has devoted his young adult life to hunting down German war criminals, using his powers to gain an edge over them. Charles Xavier (James McAvoy), who can read minds and influence the thoughts of others, has been breezing his way through Oxford University, working on a thesis about genetic mutations and picking up women with his abilities. His adopted sister Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) is always by his side, and feels uncomfortable in her natural blue skin, taking solace in her ability to shape-shift. Xavier and Raven are recruited by Moira McTaggert (Rose Byrne), a CIA agent, to help stop The Hellfire Club, a sinister organization operated by Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) devoted to fostering war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Lehnsherr's path collides with Xavier's when Erik discovers Shaw, the man who tortured him in Poland, is still alive. Unable to defeat The Hellfire Club, Charles and Erik recruit a group of young mutants to help, creating the "first class" of X-Men.

  Things get off to a bit of a shaky start during the opening scene, which retells the prologue to the first X-Men involving a young Erik Lehnsherr manifesting his powers for the first time in a Nazi concentration camp in Poland*. People have speculated that director Matthew Vaughn (Stardust, Kick-Ass) reused the opening of Bryan Singer's X-Men, which is half true; it's a mix of footage from the first film intercut with new footage of the actor playing young Erik (Bill Milner) and his mother (Éva Magyar). Many of the cut-aways that don't rely on Milner or Magyar's faces are simply reused wholesale from X-Men, including all of the "fence bending," and Nazi reactions. It's been condensed considerably, and a shot of Kevin Bacon as Sebastian Shaw has been added to wed the old film to the new, but in some respects, one already feels like we've been down this road before.

 It's alternately refreshing and frustrating to X-Men fans to watch First Class, in part because the first three (four?) films introduced many of the characters that actually comprise the "first class" of X-Men (which, for the record, is Cyclops, Jean Grey, Iceman, Beast, and Angel). Because all of them have been used and cannot, therefore, appear as younger versions of themselves nearly 40 years before the first X-Men is set, Vaughn and the screenwriters (Ashley Miller, Zack Stentz, and Jane Goldman) have to use a different set of mutants, and while it's nice to see Banshee (Caleb Landry Jones), Havok (Lucas Till), and a younger Hank McCoy / Beast (Nicholas Hoult), I felt like I was always watching a bit of the "B" team. To be honest with you, I'd never heard of Darwin (Edi Gathegi) or Angel Salvatore / Tempest (Zoë Kravitz) before this movie, and while I haven't been reading any X-Men comics in years, it felt like their presence was superfluous at best (for one of them, it really is). Since "Tempest" is never uttered, the assumed nickname for Kravitz's character is "Angel," which only serves to remind fans that she's merely a surrogate for another character.

 The Hellfire Club is used as a surrogate "Brotherhood of Evil Mutants" for First Class, and instead of dealing with their complicated (to say the least) power structure, Shaw's inner circle consists of Emma Frost (January Jones), Azazel (Jason Flemyng), and Riptide (Álex González), although I'd swear to you no one ever says Riptide's name in the entirety of the film. Shaw and Frost are part of the original Hellfire Club, so that makes sense, but the only reason I can see Azazel is in the film is because he has similar powers to Nightcrawler (and physically resembles him, appropriate since Azazel and Mystique are his parents) and since you know what side Mystique and Magneto end up on, you know where Nightcrawler comes from. Riptide? I guess they really needed those whirlwinds and nothing else from González - he never utters a word in the film.

 Okay, so I hate to be nit-picky here, but we know where all of the characters are going to end up, and so do the writers which means we have to put up with Charles Xavier making jokes about losing his hair. There's the tension-less subplot lifted from X-Men: The Last Stand about being "normal" which is an excuse to transition Hank McCoy from normal looking dude to guy in horrible makeup / cg-mouth that makes me long for Kelsey Grammer. Is it vaguely interesting to link mutants to the Cuban Missile Crisis? Yeah, I guess, but we also know how the Cuban Missile Crisis ended, so it's really about waiting for Magneto to turn bad and Charles Xavier to a) go bald, b) end up in a wheelchair, or c) both. One of the three happens, by the way. Everything tries to be roughly consistent with the other X-films. Well, most of them, anyway...

 I don't actually know that there are any fans of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but if there are you'll be sad to hear that the film has been erased from the canon that makes up X-Men movie "history." For Emma Frost to be January Jones in the 1960s, it's impossible for her also to be a teenager a decade later when Logan saves her from Stryker. Of course, since Marvel has every intention of relaunching Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool, it should come to no surprise that Wolverine is conveniently being swept under the rug. (SPOILERS AHEAD) The only hint of a connection to Hugh Jackman's ill-fated solo venture is a cameo by Logan in First Class, which occurs while Charles and Erik are recruiting mutants. It cleverly takes advantage of the PG13 ratings one allotted "F" bomb and is arguably the funniest scene in the entire film. It's not the only cameo by a cast member who appeared in earlier X-films: Rebecca Romijn has a brief appearance when Mystique attempts to seduce Erik, but it's far less successful (END SPOILERS).

 So you'd think that I really hated the movie, or was at least bored, but not really. It's very entertaining for all of the "does this movie need to exist"-ness on display: McAvoy and particularly Fassbender are great as Xavier and Lehnsherr, and they if nothing else are worth seeing the film. Rose Byrne is very good in a thankless role, Nicholas Hoult, Caleb Landry Jones, and Lucas Till are all pretty good, and Kevin Bacon imbues Sebastian Shaw with an evil curiosity for all things mutant. His philosophy, which ironically (or appropriately, if you prefer) is adopted by Magneto, is consistent with his background, and Shaw and Lehnsherr are ultimately correct in predicting how humanity will regard mutant-kind.

 Unfortunately, the cast kind of drops off after that. I've already mentioned that González and Flemyng aren't really a factor at all, and that Kravitz and Gathegi have painfully underwritten roles, but the biggest problem(s) are X-Men: First Class' female leads: Jennifer Lawrence and January Jones. Lawrence isn't bad so much as just not very interesting. I didn't care about Mystique at all, and her character arc really seemed to be a bad copy of Rogue's story from the first three X-Men films, except that I know Mystique eventually becomes the much more interesting Rebecca Romijn. January Jones is just terrible: it's as though before every scene, she thought "what's the worst possible line reading I can give of this dialogue" and then did it. I could say more, but this clip really does it all for me:



 She isn't helped by the really lousy looking "diamond" skin digital effects, which look almost as bad as Riptide's typhoons or Beast's lips, which is shocking considering how much money Fox put together to make this film. I don't know whether to blame Vaughn or the visual effects team, but for this film to look as cheap (if not cheaper) than X-Men Origins: Wolverine, was shocking.

 Yeesh. You know, I think I'm talking myself into hating this film more than I thought I did. I had fun watching it, wasn't really bored at any point, and when it's good, I can overlook the awkward and stupid parts. Or I thought I could. Wow, maybe I did hate this movie. In which case, kudos to Matthew Vaughn, a director who I don't usually enjoy (Layer Cake is the exception) for fooling me into being entertained by a movie that doesn't hold up whatsoever under the mildest of scrutiny. Kudos to McAvoy, Bacon and Fassbender too, I guess, for being compelling enough to make me overlook the piles of inanity surrounding you. It's very rare that I sit down to review a movie I thought I liked, only to realize there's no good reason I should. The last time that happened was.... well, I'll be damned: Tron Legacy.

 * There is some linguistic imprecision here that is troubling: I changed the language, but didn't mean to imply the that the concentration camp was of Polish design, merely location. Both X-Men and X-Men: First Class make a point of identifying where the camp is, and the reference was to where it was, not who ran it. Apologizes to anyone offended.