Fits perfectly well alongside the first two X-flicks

Rating: 7/10 (10 June 2011)

The fairest things you can say about X-Men: First Class is that it is clearly at least the 3rd best X-film, it may be the best written movie that's ever credited 6 people for the story and screenplay and it is absolutely one of the best prequels that's ever been made. Those all sound like more backhanded compliments that I intend or this motion picture deserves, but they are the most accurate descriptions I can come up with.
Set primarily in the early 1960s, the story concerns how Professor X (James McEvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) met and began their lifelong enmity over the place of mutants in human society. They're brought together by their pursuit of Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon). Magneto is after him for Shaw killing his mother and torturing him as a boy in a Nazi concentration camp. Professor X has allied himself with the CIA and is after Shaw to stop him from starting a nuclear war between the U.S. and the USSR, something Shaw thinks will destroy humanity and empower mutantkind. Each side assembles their own team, with shape-changing Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) among the good mutants and telepathic lingerie fan Emma Frost (January Jones) highlighting the bad guys.
The Martin Luther King Jr. vs Malcolm X dynamic between Professor X and Magneto is blended with a plot and visual style straight out of a 1960s spy movie. Now, it's more like a really good Matt Helm flick than James Bond, but these filmmakers use that groovy look and sensibility to create one of the best representations of classic super-hero imagery without it feeling too "comic booky". By funneling super-hero tropes through the 60s spy genre, it almost effortlessly normalizes them without having to compromise them.
The script juggles a big cast better than any other X-film and about as well as any action flick ever has. Yeah, most of them are cannon fodder or cardboard stand ins, but they're never obtrusive or annoying and they all orbit quite well around the quartet at the heart of the story. The mutant vs. human debate of Professor X and Magento is unfolded into an assimilation vs. racial pride standoff between Mystique and the Beast (Nicholas Hoult). The script even manages to expertly mirror its era by giving Magneto the revolutionary appeal of 1960s social turmoil, and casting Professor X as too weak and accommodating, which deliciously plays off the template of the first two X-films where Magneto was the aging radical still grasping at revolution while the Professor's approach had actually built something meaningful and lasting.
The action scenes are good, though they become less effective as they become more overtly super-heroic. There are a couple of tremendous cameos. The continuity of the first two X-films is mostly respected and enhanced. And this movie finally resolves an argument that started with the original motion picture. Yes, Magneto's comic book helmet does look kind of goofy when you faithfully reproduce in the real world.
First Class doesn't have the dramatic depth of X-Men or United, but it's a fun, funny and exciting summer experience. It's a shame the flaws of The Last Stand or Wolverine may have soured folks on mutant cinema and scared them away from this one but if you enjoyed the first two films at all, you should definitely give this one a look.