Sean is a senior critic for Filmcritic.com.Sometimes the venerable movie gods figure a way to balance the scales, to right a wrong, and to deliver to dedicated fans the movie they've wanted all along.
Comic book readers and superhero enthusiasts, that film is Matthew Vaughn's X-Men: First Class, a triumphant companion to Bryan Singer's foray into Marvel's mutant territory and the ambitious thriller loyal Vaughn supporters (myself, included) expected him to make back in 2006.
For those who don't know the full story, wunderkind producer-director Vaughn (Stardust, Kick-Ass) was the original choice to helm 20th Century Fox's third X-Men installment, The Last Stand, but bowed out of the project for personal reasons two weeks before filming began. Rush Hour director Brett Ratner took his place, and while he didn't go so far as to cast Chris Tucker as the Juggernaut, his misguided installment spoiled any chance of having a near-perfect X-Men trilogy to call our own.
After a self-imposed delay, Vaughn finally gets his shot at the mutant franchise, hinting through his stellar work on X-Men: First Class how much better Last Stand would have been in his capable hands. It's not just having access to the tools. Vaughn brings a deep and honest understanding of these characters that Ratner obviously couldn't fake.
Like Batman Begins, Casino Royale, or J.J. Abrams's Star Trek, First Class resets an existing film franchise for the purpose of telling more stories with younger versions of accepted characters. Yet while it's not quite as airtight as those three examples, First Class is, without question, the best X-Men movie I've seen and a spectacular start to what I'm hoping is a lengthy, fruitful partnership between the director and these heroes.
We begin where Singer started his journey, in the concentration camps where malicious Nazis separated young Erik Lehnsherr from his parents. But First Class goes on to explain that the puppet master pulling Erik's strings is Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), who's interested in the boy's latent ability to manipulate metal.
Perspective soon shifts to -- and stays in -- the 1960s, where scholars recognize university student Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) for his advanced studies in genetic mutations. Xavier's research puts him on the radar of beautiful CIA agent Moira MacTaggert (Rose Byrne) as she tracks Shaw's evil doings as leader of the Hellfire Club. It also puts Charles on a collision course with a grown but still grieving Erik (Michael Fassbender), who's obsessed with paying Shaw back for past wrongs.
First Class exists at a time when mighty mutants are just beginning to realize their potential, and the strong currents of awe and fear energize Vaughn's material. With our government's help, Xavier tracks and recruits ostracized mutants for an experimental training program. Like its predecessors (and the comic books, of course), First Class debates the ideas of segregation, acceptance and tolerance between humans and mutants, with shape shifter Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), wailing Banshee (Caleb Landry Jones) and the blue-furred Beast (Nicholas Hoult) figuring out where they fit in with society ... if they fit in, at all.
But First Class also realizes the full potential of these super-powered heroes because Vaughn and his team aren't afraid to think on a large scale. Bacon is allowed to play Shaw like a sneering Bond villain, accompanied by scantily clad sidekick Emma Frost (January Jones) as he hatches an elaborate plot to pit the U.S. against Russia in a nuclear war. Naming Shaw and the globetrotting Hellfire Club as the X-Men's chief adversary immediately stretches First Class across a massive canvas, but Vaughn has no problem filling the screen with memorable performances, elaborate action set pieces, and the finest display of mutant powers we've seen in an X-Men film. While the first half of First Class busies itself with character movement and set up, the second half is a nonstop sprint through a spectacular payoff centered around a military standoff in the Caribbean... a moment U.S. history has come to recognize as the Cuban Missile Crisis.
X-Men: First Class works so well on multiple levels. As an origin story, it is patient, respectful of its source material, and smart about taking familiar characters in new directions. As a summer popcorn thriller, it boasts amazingly elaborate action sequences weaved through a tense plot that's politically relevant despite its period setting. And as an X-Men movie, it taps all the right geek chords (one surprising cameo, in particular, is beautifully played). If those movie gods are paying attention, First Class won't be Vaughn's last chance at telling an X-Men movie on screen.
