ViewGuide

Created Jun 05, 2011 02:39PM PST • Edited Oct 25, 2023 02:47PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   First class prequels are Hollywood mutants, crisply intelligent rather than trite – obligatory touchstones notwithstanding. X-Men: First Class surpasses that standard, rebooting a tired saga with fresh casting, well grounded plot devices and an engaging mix of resonant themes.

   Marvel achieves this alchemy by putting a strong ensemble of stars in front of the behind-the-camera studs from Kick-Ass and Thor, two other smart superhero movies. As executive producing goes, that’s a lock.

   Bring on the sequels! This class of X-Men are welcome back again and again.

4. Acting

   Very Good 3.5

   Strong ensemble cast:

   • James McAvoy brings visible intelligence to the role of head X-Man Dr. Charles Xavier.
   • Michael Fassbender as Erik Lehnsherr (Magneto in X-Men guise) has a compelling, leading man presence. Interesting casting choice: an Aryan actor playing a Jewish victim of the Nazis.
   • Kevin Bacon as űber-evil villain Sebastian Shaw is most impressive, and necessary in a vengeance movie like this. Not only does he smoothly deliver much of his dialog in German and Russian, he ably delivers an oily gravitas that is coolly sociopathic.
   • Rose Byrne, as an intrepid CIA agent, is all over the multiplex right now, here and in Bridesmaids.
   • Jennifer Lawrence, as a luscious teen with body image issues, proves that her star turn in Winter’s Bone wasn’t a fluke. In X-Hottie Mystique guise, she often wears only bejeweled blue body paint, a “costume” sure to establish her as pin-up material for a generation of fanboys.
   • January Jones as Emma Frost, white ice-queen X-Hottie, wears tight white leather when not wearing white lingerie. Miss January is now Miss Taciturn Monroe for a new generation.
   • Nicholas Hoult, the young boy from About a Boy, plays the sensitive Beast charmingly.

   Watch for big name cameos from James Remar as a General, Ray Wise as the Secretary of State, Michael Ironside as a naval officer, Oliver Platt as a CIA sponsor of the X-Men, and of course Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. Much cheering for this last, since it is suggests that Jackman’s Wolverine will loom large in sequels with this cast.

   Oh yeah, JFK and Khrushchev make important appearances via newsreel.

5. Male Stars Great 4.0

6. Female Stars Very Good 3.5

7. Female Costars Good 3.0

8. Male Costars Good 3.0

10. Film

    Really Great 4.5

    A Hall of Fame Holocaust scene opens the film, setting the hook deep into revenge fantasy territory and the pattern of playing off real world events. Kudos to writer-director Mathew Vaughn (he of Kick-Ass fame) and a team of terrific co-writers that includes Ashley Miller and Zack Stentz from Thor, and also Bryan Singer, who apparently brought his Nazi knowledge from Valkyrie to bear.

11. Direction Perfect 5.0

12. Play Great 4.0

    Much crazy-talk about saving the world and all that.

    Several effective tongue-in-cheek references lighten the load.

    The core X-Men appeal – young people feeling like outcasts – never loses its appeal.

13. Music Very Good 3.5

14. Visuals Really Great 4.5

    Love the SR-71 Blackbird as the X-Men plane. Nice that they were able to give it a fighter’s maneuverability, vertical take-off and hovering ability, not to mention the interior room of a jetliner. ;-]

    Other visual highlights include impressive aerial views of august mansions, the Oxford University campus, and various military headquarters installations.

    The naval scene off the coast of Cuba during the Missile Crisis is also extremely well visualized.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 2.5

    Engineered for fanboys, the movie features leering looks at the X-Hotties and some silly sexual frolicking. It also includes some brutally affecting violence, including a boy forced to watch his mother’s murder.

17. Sex Titillating 2.5

18. Violence Brutal 2.6

19. Rudeness Salty 2.5

21. Reality

    Fantasy 4.3

    Conservation of Energy is the Law of Nature most abhorred by Comik Movies such as this.

    Back in the real world, the movie takes as its grounding the Cuban Missile Crisis, suggesting that an evil genius fomented it, that there was a moral equivalence between the US and the USSR, and that superheroes were required to avert catastrophe. The reality is quite different, of course. A new profile of JFK’s first year in office, Berlin 1961, suggests that the young president’s weakness and naïveté in dealing with the Soviets set the stage for the Cuban Missile Crisis and much more. Where were the X-Men when we needed them?

22. Circumstantial Surreal 3.0

23. Biological Fantasy 5.0

24. Physical Fantasy 5.0