Superhero prequel fails to breathe new life into tired franchise

Rating: 5/10 (20 May 2014)

X-MEN: FIRST CLASS is a film that aims to breathe new life into a somewhat tired franchise (so far consisting of the original trilogy and two stand-alone Wolverine stories) by telling the back story of the Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen characters from the original movies. Thus we're handed a bright young cast of up-and-comers who engage in their own superhero adventures.
The setting is the early '60s, at the height of the Cold War. James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender, playing the early versions of Stewart and McKellen respectively, recruit some familiar and not-so familiar mutants to help them wage a war against generic bad guy Kevin Bacon. What follows is watchable but overlong and fairly underwhelming, offering exactly the kind of CGI-heavy spectacle as the other films in the series while failing to engage the brain properly at any time.
It goes without saying that McAvoy and Fassbender - particularly the latter - are by far the best things in this movie. The rest of the cast, including Jennifer Lawrence, are lacklustre and some of them, such as Nicholas Hoult playing a goofy boffin, are downright embarrassing. Bacon's on autopilot, while Rose Byrne gives one of the most excruciatingly wooden turns I've seen in recent months, a surprise given she was pretty good in previous movies like SUNSHINE and 28 WEEKS LATER.
Like the STAR WARS prequels, this film was conceived of a way of starting afresh while at the same time bringing back some old and much-loved characters who are a guaranteed box-office draw. But the film rings fairly hollow, and while it works as a bit of spectacle, it's one of those movies you forget about straight after. It says something that the most excitement I had was seeing one of my favourite character actors, Michael Ironside, in a role amounting to little more than a cameo as a ship's captain. I find Matthew Vaughn a hit and miss director and this is more miss than hit, unfortunately.