{"id":14762,"date":"2011-05-25T11:57:28","date_gmt":"2011-05-25T10:57:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/?p=14762"},"modified":"2012-04-26T09:07:00","modified_gmt":"2012-04-26T08:07:00","slug":"review-x-men-first-class","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/reviews\/review-x-men-first-class\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: X-Men: First Class"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Released: <\/strong>June 3
\nCertificate:<\/strong> 12a
\nDirector:<\/strong> Matthew Vaughn
\nScreenwriter: <\/strong>Ashley Edward Miller, Zack Stentz, Jane Goldman, Matthew Vaughn
\nCast:<\/strong> James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Kevin Bacon, Rose Byrne
\nDistributor:<\/strong> 20th<\/sup> Century Fox
\nRunning Time:<\/strong> 131 mins<\/p>\n

What\u2019s Matthew Vaughn\u2019s superpower, do you reckon? Some sort of chimerical ability to make a beautiful, visual feast of a film that leaves its viewer Easter egg empty, or possessor of the much sought-after ability to reinvent staid sub-genres (cockney gangster flicks with Layer Cake<\/em>, Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels<\/em> and Snatch<\/em>, or post-modern superheroes with Kick-Ass<\/em>) for a demanding new era of high expectations and low attention spans?<\/p>\n

Perhaps a dose of the former and a touch of the latter, and maybe that\u2019s just what\u2019s required to massage that last little burst of excitement from the empty car battery of enthusiasm that greets the increasingly stale X-Men<\/em> movie franchise.<\/p>\n

Channelling the aesthetics of the Sixties spy thriller, down to the dancing dolly birds and Dr Strangelove<\/em> war rooms, antagonists plotting global war from the white leather recliners of a submarine that detaches from a yacht in a display of pure Bond excess, X-Men: First Class<\/em> is having a great deal of fun without entering the Austin Powers<\/em>-like realm of absolute, irredeemable silliness. The return to the harrowing holocaust scenes which opened 2000\u2019s X-Men results in a The Boys From Brazil<\/em> style Nazi-hunt, and there\u2019s some brilliant faux-retro effects too; TV serial split-screens during the training sequence, and a kaleidoscope effect for Xavier\u2019s first big display of telepathy. Vaughn has clearly been raiding his Blu-rays and rolling around in clich\u00e9.<\/p>\n

All creations carry the watermark of their age \u2013 and the X-Men are without doubt children of the Sixties, their whole existence a stark metaphor for civil rights and nuclear terror, of enemies within and women\u2019s liberation. But while the Cuban Missile Crisis is never lurking too far off screen, and holds the plot firmly in its rocket fingers, little else is touched on, and few parallels are drawn. Where Iron Man<\/em> wrung its hands over the defence industry and war in the Middle East, X-Men: First Class<\/em> contents itself with a single black character, who alludes to problems beyond his membership in Homo Superior, and then promptly gets killed off. Similarly, while Rose Byrne\u2019s FBI agent Moira MacTaggert (no connection to the character beyond the name, fanboys) is threatened with a return to the typing pool, the opportunity to embrace the allegories the whole series was built on way back in 1963 is largely ignored. Mad Men<\/em>\u2019s January Jones, who does nothing much of anything as Emma Frost, seems as decorative a presence in the cast as her character is in the villain\u2019s retinue. Look, look, it\u2019s the Sixties everyone!<\/p>\n

If X-Men: First Class<\/em> didn\u2019t have to be an X-Men movie, it would be far better off, because it\u2019s in the demands of the canon where this muscular romp starts to atrophy, beyond missed opportunities and into actual weaknesses. In failing to learn from The Last Stand<\/em> (which he nearly directed, so he really should have been paying attention), there\u2019s a mess of ensemble characters who might as well be dogs in little coats for all the resemblance they bear to their comic-book counterparts, cluttering up valuable screen time with their Glee<\/em>-like bleating about being special\/different (try not to sick on your popcorn when you first hear the phrase \u201cMutant, and proud!\u201d). There\u2019s some increasingly stodgy dialogue, and ludicrous decisions and plot developments quickly crammed into the last half-hour in a joyless and mechanical attempt to move things from raucous period thriller to some point prior to the first movie \u2013 possibly a result of the film\u2019s hectic production schedule. The transition from the narrative open field of the film\u2019s beginnings, where anything seemed game, to the heavily formulaic, traditional X-movie fare of the conclusion where Good Mutants and Bad Mutants face off, and overcome where they previously failed by working as a team, before trading self-righteous, valedictory speeches, is as stark as crossing from West to East Berlin.<\/p>\n

The relationship between Xavier (James McAvoy, not doing a Patrick Stewart impression thankfully) and the man who would be Magneto (the craggy Michael Fassbender) is complex and genuine, which only makes the last 30 minutes even more absurd \u2013 would you really defend the terrified bigotry of mankind by saying \u201cThey were only following orders\u201d to a holocaust survivor? Dude, seriously, are you trying to turn him into a supervillain?<\/p>\n

Kevin Bacon\u2019s steely sadist Sebastian Shaw is a delight. Despite occupying full Bond villain territory, complete with his gimmicky, monosyllabic sidekicks, who when lurking in their submarine are slightly reminiscent of the rogues gallery in the 1966 Batman<\/em> movie \u2013 again dogs in little coats using the names of characters from the comic \u2013 he\u2019s supremely menacing, conveying power without CGI (although there\u2019s plenty of it), his whole shtick an ominous foreshadowing of Magneto\u2019s own campaign of messianic terror on behalf of mutantkind.<\/p>\n

From the yapping huddle of dogs in little coats comes a beautifully understated performance from Skins<\/em>\u2019 Nicholas Hoult as Hank McCoy, the sophistication of his insecure genius standing in direct contrast to Jennifer Lawrence\u2019s Raven \u2018Mystique\u2019 Darkholme, whose heavy handed \u2018issues\u2019 are on a par with Anna Paquin\u2019s performance in the first X-Men film, and a definite catalyst for a Glee<\/em>-style song and dance number.<\/p>\n

In a year in which Marvel have given us Thor<\/em>, and Captain America: The First Avenger<\/em> is lurking on the horizon like the silhouette of the flag going up over Iwo Jima, it would be easy for X-Men: First Class<\/em> to be just another superhero movie, but against the odds it carves out its own little corner of the world, with its own tone and delicious style.<\/p>\n

If Matthew Vaughn\u2019s power is of mesmerising illusions, then the fact that he at least made us forget we were hurtling toward such lyrical gems as \u201cDo you know what happens to a toad when it\u2019s struck by lightning?\u201d and \u201cI\u2019m the Juggernaut, bitch!\u201d is good enough. That it comes with a real sense of charm, warmth and fun \u2013 long since strangers to this particular franchise \u2013 is a bonus.<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Roll back the clock for the X-Men origin extravaganza<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":14763,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"MSN_Categories":"Uncategorized","MSN_Publish_Option":false,"MSN_Is_Local_News":false,"MSN_Is_AIAC_Included":"Empty","MSN_Location":"[]","MSN_Add_Feature_Img_On_Top_Of_Post":false,"MSN_Has_Custom_Author":false,"MSN_Custom_Author":"","MSN_Has_Custom_Canonical_Url":false,"MSN_Custom_Canonical_Url":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[113,708,1372],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/05\/x-men-first-class-poster-2.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14762"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}