Film Review | X-Men: First Class

Prequels are, as a rule, icky things. In many ways they are anti-films: appendixes disguised as prologues, telling us stories we know the ending to while barely bothering to disguise the fact that they’re little more than cash cows. But unlike, say, the monstrosities that were the Star Wars prequels, Marvel’s X-Men: First Class is somewhat of a hybrid – a prequel-reboot.

At the helm of this new superproject from the House of Stan and Jack (that’s ‘short’hand for Marvel, you non-geeks) is Brit director Matthew Vaughn, who I spoke about last week, and who had been primed to direct the third instalment of the original X-Men saga but dropped out due to complications… which led to a messy soup of a film when left at the hands of hack-for-hire director Brett Ratner.

However, the more robust Vaughn does hold his own with the tale of how the X-Men came to be… if only just.

As Charles Xavier (not Professor, crippled nor bald yet, and played by James McAvoy) goes deeper and deeper into his research on genetic mutation – himself being a closet telepath – Jewish-German fellow mutant Eric Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender) is busy tracing and summarily disposing of – with none too little help from his power to manipulate metal objects – the surviving Nazis who aided and abetted the Josef Mengele-like figure Sebastian Schmidt (Kevin Bacon), who murdered Eric’s mother in cold blood.

The two mutants cross paths as they discover that Schmidt has reinvented himself as Sebastian Shaw, leader of the enigmatic ‘Hellfire Club’ – a secretive cadre of mutants with ties to a conspiracy to launch a nuclear attack on Russia.

With the help of sympathetic CIA agent Moira MacTaggart (Rose Byrne), Xavier races against time to put together a team of mutant youths in an effort to stop Shaw.

But while Eric agrees to play along with the team, his quest for revenge threatens to undermine Xavier’s mission of tolerance.
The first half or so is nothing short of thrilling. Eric’s quest for revenge is a guilty pleasure: his cold-blooded stare, coupled with his powers and an understandable anger as he trots across the globe not only comes across as a felicitous – if probably unwitting – call-back to Fassbender’s previous role in Inglourious Basterds, but also made me think that he could have wiped the floor with Daniel Craig had he ever been in the running for James Bond.

His uneasy alliance with Xavier’s pack adds a welcome, sinister tinge throughout. McAvoy, too, succeeds in not making Xavier a patronising do-gooder (very easy to do, and something that Patrick Stewart had just about managed in the original films) but a genuinely charismatic one. Jennifer Lawrence, who plays the blue-skinned shapeshifter Raven Darkholme (aka Mystique) is his foil – they are accidental foster-siblings – and the Winter’s Bone star also adds some gravitas.

But as tends to happen, the ‘too many characters spoil the broth syndrome’, which helped X-Men 3 to completely keel over, threatens to undermine Vaughn’s efforts to keep things fresh and brisk. This results in a so-so latter half, crammed with all the rushed, short-hand attempts to wrap up loose ends, while secondary characters get nary a second glance.

But, given that the 60s vibe allows more flamboyance to seep through – for once, there isn’t an embarrassed urge to substitute primary-coloured spandex with ‘dignified’ military-style black leather – and given some time, Vaughn and Xavier’s pack of freak brats might just grow into a team to be reckoned with.