Very Good: 8.5

Rating: 8/10 (27 July 2019)

When the trailer for this film was first shown to me during some movie that I can't remember the title of, and I remember thinking, "this looks TOTALLY BADASS!" And guess what? It is. First Class serves as an extremely fitting double entendre of a title. The story takes place in the 1960s, with America and the Soviet Union on the brink of plunging the world into nuclear war. Erik (AKA Magneto), as we leaned way back in the first X-Men movie, is a small child taken from his parents during the Holocaust, and Charles (AKA Professor X) is a rich kid who has learnt of his ability to read minds. Both parts are played with incredible subtlety and emotion by Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy, respectively. Fassbender brings a perfect underscore of hidden menace that is completely faithful to the part, as everyone knows that Magneto and X go their very separate ways eventually. McAvoy, by contrast, always seems cool and calculated (to be expected of a hyper intelligent mind reader), until those few, very special scenes where he realizes he can no longer influence Erik to stray from the bad path he will inevitably take. The plot is basically X-Men Origins, which, without the Wolverine in the title, that would be just as fitting as First Class. Erik and Xavier are recruited by the CIA to help avert the coming apocalypse. They smartly know that they of course cannot do it by themselves, but instead discover (in a truly hilarious scene), that they aren't alone before they have even begun. They use Hank McCoy's machine called Cerebro (see X2 for further information on it) to find a whole generation of mutants, though we only get to see six or seven of them. In one of the few truly good montage sequences so cliched in film these days, these select mutants are discovered and recruited by the duo to aid in their war against war. These mutants play a surprisingly important role in the film, and admirably, none are used as vehicles for special effects showcases. Each one somehow manages to be depicted as fully characterized, fully human characters, and this is the trait whose lack is what plagued the previous two X-Men films. This exemplifies the stellar script that has been assembled for this film, with absolutely zero lines that seem campy or out of place. The same can be said of the various scenes, with each one having its own significance and meaning that helps drive the story forward. All of this is handled deftly by director Matthew Vaughn, whose previous film Kick Ass feels entirely modest and small by comparison. When I learned that this was the director assigned to the project, I was skeptical from the beginning, because I was worried that there would be unnecessary scenes and humor just stuffed in for good measure, as was done in Kick Ass. However, I am happy to say that I was wrong. Completely. In fact, I will say, wholeheartedly, that this ties X2 as the best film in the franchise, and even tops in in quite a few respects, making First Class at the very least equal to X2. Bryan Singer's two X-Men films paid a bit too much attention to the story, and sometimes seemed to just throw characters at the proverbial wall. This film pays equal attention to both aspects, and is a better movie for it. While it is not a subgenre definer, like The Dark Knight or Spider Man, it is a very good film that should be remembered alongside classics such as these.