It is difficult to imagine, but back in 2000, the idea of successful films based on comic book super heroes were as rare as actual, real-life mutants. All that changed with Bryan Singer’s “X-Men,” a box-office hit that introduced mutants to the movie-going audience and arguably began a revolution in terms of comic book-based motion pictures.
Time travel to the present and comic-book movies are being unleashed every other month and the X-Men movie franchise has evolved to include three more movies (2003’s “X2,” 2006’s “X-Men: The Last Stand” and 2009’s “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”) and launched the career of one Hugh Jackman, who starred as the badass claw-wielding Wolverine.
The X-Men movie franchise refocuses itself on the very beginnings of Marvel Comics’ premier mutant super-team with British director Matthew Vaughn’s “X-Men: First Class.” Vaughn has always displayed a lot of versatility, helming the snazzy gangster flick “Layer Cake,” the high fantasy “Stardust” and the ironic comic-book film “Kick-Ass,” and now he punches a lot of different switches and buttons in what is essentially the X-Men origin story.
It is the early 1960s and the world is teetering on the edge of nuclear war as the Cuban missile crisis plays out between superpowers the United States and the Soviet Union. Unknown to everyone, events are being manipulated by the mutant mastermind Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) who seeks to bring about nuclear apocalypse as a way to enable mutantkind’s ascension to global power. Enter the powerful telepath Charles Xavier (James McAvoy from “Wanted” and “Atonement,” and magnetic master Erik Lensherr (Michael Fassbender from “Inglorious Basterds”), who gather a team of mutant teenagers in the hopes of thwarting Shaw’s designs. Rose Byrne plays CIA contact Moira MacTaggert while Academy Award nominee Jennifer Lawrence plays the shapeshifting Raven. January Jones (TV’s “Mad Men”) is Shaw’s telepathic associate Emma Frost.
Vaughn puts all his cards on the table with “X-Men: First Class,” imbuing the film with the very colorful style of the early James Bond movies while greasing the movie so that it resolutely hits all its marks, answers all its given questions. As a result, “X-Men: First Class” is clearly divided into three parts.
The first, rather ponderous and talky portion speaks to Xavier and Erik’s histories as well as sets the stage for the Cuban Missile Crisis. The second, the movie’s best, brightest chapter shows Xavier and Erik as they recruit mutants and show the metahuman teenagers test their powers. The movie’s final portion is a test of wills as friends face off to determine the future, involving huge CGI-fueled action scenes as well as tense personal confrontations. If you wondered where they got their code names, for example, “X-Men: First Class” tries hard to provide answers.
Bacon is fantastic as Shaw, chewing scenery gleefully as the big villain. Lawrence brings a sympathetic substance to Raven and her identity crisis; she becomes Mystique. Nicolas Hoult (“About A Boy”) has a similar transformation into the Beast. But the best part of “First Class” is the complex relationship between Xavier and Erik, whom we know will eventually become the heroic mentor Professor X and the evil terrorist leader Magneto. McAvoy is pitch perfect as Xavier, giving an elegantly compact performance that’s matched by the flinty intensity of Fassbender’s Erik.
There were initial reports that “X-Men: First Class” would be completely removed from the continuity earlier X-movies. That is clearly untrue. In fact, “X-Men: First Class” now snugly fits the role as prequel for the earlier four films as several surprising scenes attest to; Vaughn likes leaving Easter eggs everywhere. Instead of going with the more familiar names, “X-Men: First Class” features characters that range from the quirky (Banshee and Havok) to the downright obscure (Darwin and Azazel). As with the other X-films, hardcore fans of the comic books will probably be annoyed with the amount of revision that’s been done here, especially regarding the mutants’ back stories, but they work well for this particular film.
The brightness of the team’s uniforms and the darkness of their enemies’ livery echo both the optimism and the fear that ends the film, essentially and eventually leading to the start of the first X-men film in 2000. In that sense, the story of Professor X and Marvel’s mutants have now come full circle over a decade later with the evolution of the smart and stylish “X-Men: First Class.”
20th Century Fox’s “X-Men: First Class” opens in Metro Manila theaters on June 2.
SUMMARY=IT IS difficult to imagine, but back in 2000, the idea of successful films based on comic book super heroes were as rare as actual, real-life mutants. All that changed with Bryan Singer’s “X-Men,” a box-office hit that introduced mutants to the movie-going audience and arguably began a revolution in terms of comic book-based motion pictures.
Time travel to the present and comic-book movies are being unleashed every other month and the X-Men movie franchise has evolved to include three more movies (2003’s “X2,” 2006’s “X-Men: The Last Stand” and 2009’s “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”) and launched the career of one Hugh Jackman, who starred as the badass claw-wielding Wolverine.
