Synopsis
Before Charles Xavier (McAvoy) and Erik Lensherr (Fassbender) took the names Professor X and Magneto, they were two young men discovering their powers for the first time, working together to stop the greatest threat the world has ever known. Along the way they get more mutants to come together to help stop Hellfire Club leader Sebastian Shaw and his minion of evil mutants.
For years fans have been crowing about wanting to see the Hellfire Club on the big screen in some capacity. Matthew Vaughn did a spectacular job with telling this portion of the story, as Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) makes for one of the more intriguing characters to emerge from the Marvel universe. His cold-hearted, human hating attitude makes for a frightening bad guy. Kevin Bacon’s calm demeanor helps drive this madman as the ultimate bad guy. From the first scene with a young Erik Lehnsherr you fully understand what Shaw will do to see his plan through to destroy all humanity. Shaw is frightening to watch when he’s on a roll with killing/destruction.
With that said, taking Shaw’s story and merging it nearly perfectly with actual historical events (Cuban missile crisis) just seemed to work without a hitch. Of course, Vaughn isn’t a stranger when it comes to mixing fantasy elements with real world elements. Look no further than movies like Kick-Ass or Stardust. He does well with the mixing and matching, and more importantly with making it fit. For the audience to engross themselves in the movie the story has to be rock solid and, more importantly, believable. X-Men: First Class‘s story is believable thanks to the missile crisis’ inclusion, and the story is made better because the Hellfire Club was placed perfectly inside of it.
Outside of the actual story, I was impressed with the actors bringing already established characters (and some not established) to life. Honestly, I can’t say I was surprised with how James McAvoy treated Charles Xavier. If you haven’t been under a rock in the last five years then you know how impressive McAvoy is as an actor. With such great movies as The Conspirator, Atonement and The Last King of Scotland on his resume, it’s not surprising that this young man would give his all no matter the movie (see Wanted for details). His suave attitude and ‘playa’ like take on Professor X was nothing short of refreshing. When he needed to get serious then he got serious, but mostly he acted his age, which was important. Opposite of him was a very scarred, revenge driven Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto played by Michael Fassbender, who is now my favorite badass. Much like McAvoy, Fassbender took what Ian McKellan already established with Magneto and gave the character a bit more of an edge. Seeing that Magneto was raw with getting his revenge against Shaw (watch the movie for details), Fassbender helped build a strong bridge to McKellen’s older Magneto. I would be shocked if this role didn’t make the original movies much better because of the strong performance. Anyway, Fassbender is solid as Erik and you fully understand his motivation against Shaw and humanity. The rest of the cast does a great job with creating new roles, and Jennifer Lawrence and Nicholas Hoult do a decent job with introducing Mystique and Beast.
So with a good story and strong characters what could possibly be wrong with the film? Well, the direction and writing are solid, but in my opinion the only thing missing from this creation is simply more of it. The movie comes in at two hours and honestly it could have stood to have at least 20 more minutes. I think that a bit more depth could have been given to the Hellfire Club as a whole. Just a little more beef to explain who they were and how they were formed. Everything else about the film had perfect balance and perfect explanation to it, but the Hellfire Club was just ‘there’ with not much rhyme or reason. It was if the movie said, “They are evil! Cool?” and the rest of us just believed it. Sure we know that Shaw and crew came together to go against humanity, but we didn’t truly see why they felt this way. A little bit of origin goes a long way.
At the end of the day, X-Men: First Class helped to redeem the last two X-Men films that 20th Century Fox released. It brought the fans what they wanted and established a new X-Men universe that has an endless amount stories that it could tell. Hopefully the cast and director Matthew Vaughn enjoyed the experience enough to come back for more movies, as their efforts and direction made this film great. If you haven’t seen X-Men: First Class yet then don’t hesitate in picking this up.
As for the Blu-ray, it visually is pretty stunning. The idea of setting the film in the 60s actually helped the HD look of the film. There are a lot of pastel colors that benefit from the high-def transfer. You’ll see lots of light blues, yellows, reds and blacks/whites that positively look exquisite on the Blu-ray medium. There is no graininess in the film, no artifacts and no color banding whatsoever. The only knock, and this isn’t really a major issue, is that the green screen moments look like green screen moments. You can see the computer-generated portions and regretfully they stand out pretty well. For example, when Xavier and Erik are sitting on the steps of the Lincoln memorial you can tell that it has been green screened. With that said, there are green screen moments that you can’t tell have been given the CGI treatment. When they’re on the beach at the end you can’t tell that a portion of it is not real, as it all looks pretty darn solid. Again, not a huge complaint, but it is something I noticed.
As for features, here’s what you’re getting on this release:
● 10 Marvel “X-Men” Digital Comics with exclusive “X-Men: First Class” Backstory Comic
● More than two hours of never-before-seen extras:
○ Cerebro Mutant Tracker: The complete interactive Mutant Database
○ Children of the Atom: An eight-part behind-the-scenes featurette
○ “X” Marks the Spot
○ Extended and Deleted Scenes
○ BD-Live Portal with additional Cerebro Mutant Tracker profiles
○ Composer’s Isolated Score
○ Theatrical Trailer
The best portion of these features is the Children of the Atom eight-part featurette. You get to see everything from movie concept to director selection to how the movie was made. You get a full story about this movie from beginning to end. What was even more impressive about this featurette is that Lauren Shuler Donner and Matthew Vaughn talk about X3 and nearly admit that it was a disaster. You don’t usually see this sort of honesty from folks involved in failed projects, but it was refreshing and it stood out pretty well. As for the other features, they were good, even the deleted scenes. All in all, you get great stuff with a great film.