Finally, Another Great X-Film!

Rating: 9/10 (28 September 2011)

We haven't had a good X-Men film since Bryan Singer left the franchise, and I was ready to give up hope on the whole deal after that Wolverine catastrophe. Word of development on a prequel arrived and all I could think was, "This isn't going to end well." Even with director Matthew Vaughn attached, I couldn't get excited. The trailer grabbed my attention but did nothing to quell my fears. I mean, another origin story (strike one) with teenage characters (strike 2) and only one member of the original comic line-up? How could this possibly end in anything but cinematic disaster? Well, I was wrong to doubt Vaughn and this movie quickly became one of my favorite movies of 2011. The film is set in the early 60s and establishes the friendship of Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr. Former Nazi and current head of the Hellfire Club Sebastian Shaw is involved with both the United States and Russia with plans of pushing the global superpowers towards nuclear war. Xavier is recruited by the C.I.A. to assemble a team of mutants to combat Shaw and his team of mutant henchmen, while Lehnsherr has plans of his own. He and Shaw have a history going back to young Lehnsherr's imprisonment in a concentration camp during World War II where Shaw killed his mother, and Lehnsherr wants revenge.
Sadly, Fox has an established movie canon for the X-Men series so they weren't able to use the original comic team (Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Beast, Iceman, and Angel) and instead we're left with sort of an X-Men B-team with a handful of characters that probably wouldn't have been more than a cameo in any other X-film. Hank McCoy/Beast is the only member of the original team who makes it into the film and, while Nicholas Hoult did a fine job as the socially awkward scientist on a personal mission to rid himself of his visible deformities, it's the actual appearance of Beast that doesn't sit too well with me. The Beast effects in THE LAST STAND were actually pretty cool in my opinion and probably the best we'd get without going CG. In FIRST CLASS, Beast looks like someone took an old-fashioned Wolfman costume and soaked it in blue dye. I eventually got over it, but it was a bit of a distraction. The rest of the team is filled out with Banshee, Angel (not the original Angel, but actually Tempest from a later X-Men comic series), Havok, Mystique, and Darwin. You can see they were reaching a bit when finding characters to fill out their movie, but the team comes together better than I expected. The fact that we've got a younger team does lead to some corny moments; the scene in which the team assigns themselves their "codenames" feels forced, but I guess it had to happen if we want to start recognizing them as Havok, Banshee, and Angel instead of Alex, Sean, anduhAngel.
The big three in this film are James McAvoy (Xavier), Michael Fassbender (Lehnsherr), and Kevin Bacon (Shaw). McAvoy and Fassbender didn't necessarily try to mimic the performances of Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan from the original trilogy. These characters really feel as if the actors tried to make it their own, but it worked out so well that it feels as if they'd later develop into the Stewart/McKellan incarnations. Since this film really focuses on Xavier and Lehnsherr, it's important that the two had such great chemistry as it depicts the strength of their relationship and how their views on mutant/human relations eventually drove them apart. And Kevin Bacon continues the comeback he started in the wicked indie superhero-wannabe film SUPER. Bacon is awesome as Shaw. He just makes a great villain; he knows how to play evil and he comes across as so cool that it's hard to totally hate the man. It just sucks his team didn't live up to his level. January Jones is bland as Emma Frost, and both Azazel and Riptide (I actually had to check the credits to find this character's name) are nothing more than muscle with no development. I really hope Azazel gets some more attention in future films.
I was surprised this film didn't do better at the box office. It was easily the best superhero movie of 2011 but it couldn't make the same cash as the other 2011 Marvel films. I loved how this film focused just as much on the characters as it did the action. There's plenty of great action in the movie, but we also get a great balance of scenes with the characters themselves: training the team, strengthening the Xavier/Lehnsherr bond, etc. Even with so much attention paid to the story, this movie never slows down and the 60s atmosphere gave the film a retro vibe that I couldn't get enough of. It's a lot of fun and I can honestly say I think it's at least as good as X2, possibly better. Matthew Vaughn has done what I'd begun thinking was impossible: creating an awesome new X-Men film.