PG-13, 2 hr. 11 min. Directed by: Matthew Vaughn. Release Date: June 3, 2011.
I was introduced to the X-Men in what I think was 1992. Well, I should say "reintroduced," since I had some old 80s-era comic books when I was a kid, but I never made a connection with everyone's favorite mutants until a classmate named Sandra mentioned she was watching the X-Men animated series either after school or on Saturdays or maybe both back in those days. I watched and I was hooked. Obsessed is probably a better word. The X-Men called to me in ways that not many superheroes did back in those days. Puberty helped me feel different from the people around me, occasionally isolated from my friends and family. Gotta love those hormones, right? The X-Men were isolated from the rest of the planet because of the way they were born. They were fighting for the right to live unmolested in a world that didn't belong to them and where they weren't accepted. It's a semi-positive message, even if the methodology used is violent and occasionally fatal... or re-fatal in the case of Jean Grey.
So my first, but not only problem with First Class is that it actually only contains one of the five original students at Xavier's Academy, Beast. Yes, this is totally nerd rage, so I'm not going to gripe about it too much. I'm also going to consider this a reboot of the series in the wake of Bryan Singer's disastrous third release in order to minimize more problems. Was I one of those screaming fanboys on Fandango screaming about the franchise bailing on the "original fans" in a tone that proved without a doubt that I was not alive to read comics in the 60s when the "original" fans of the series would have been found? No, but I had more than a few concerns well before I'd seen so much as the first trailer.
I also didn't like some of the casting decisions: James McAvoy and Jennifer Lawrence follow in the "let's-cast-Oscar-noms-in-an-action-flick" overkill tradition of the X-Men series, but I didn't love either of them in their roles as Xavier and Mystique, collectively. I particularly didn't appreciate that McAvoy tried to play off young Charles Xavier as if he'd helped inspire Austin Powers. That was a VERY groovy mutation, baby, yeah! And what's with the kid playing Banshee? Rupert Grint wasn't available? They had to go and use his clone?
But once I got past all that, First Class is one significantly slick piece of script work and special effects. They did an amazing job of tying in the new take on the series to the existing work, such as Mystique choosing to appear as Rebecca Romeijn, which I totally thought was an improvement (sorry, Jennifer Lawrence), setting up Beast's transition from odd human to blue furball, explaining Xavier's wheelchair, showing how the relationships between various characters formed, and even bringing in Hugh Jackman in a Wolverine cameo. There are also obvious shots of young Storm, Jean Grey, and Cyclops in various scenes involving Cerebro. Vaughn may want to re-imagine the series, but he's not leaving anything behind.
The story is very strong, and feels almost like a period piece, because it vaguely follows the path of events that led to the Cuban Missile Crisis in the 60s. Several scenes have real video news archives included, so we can see Kennedy's address about what happens although the events that caused that historic event have been changed. There were, I thought, few actual action scenes, and while I haven't confirmed this anywhere, I suspect we'll be seeing more movies in this vein (hopefully with some extra characters thrown in).
