This Friday, June 3rd, audiences were bombarded with the existence of mutants in the newest superhero flick of the summer, X-Men: First Class. Focusing on the early years of both Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender), Matthew Vaughn’s film chronicles the first conflict of the yet to be named X-Men. As the small band of mutants attempts to save humanity from the villainous Hellfire Club and the powerful Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), both Xavier and Lehnsherr’s ideals regarding humanity and evolution are crafted. The film is an action-packed adventure, but fails to utilize the already brilliant structure the material has.
Story and Plot
As with all comic book movies, the issue of canonical accuracy is brought up. As I mentioned previously while reviewing Thor, I have no problem with changes, but they need to be necessary. In an attempt to get as much from this film as possible, I attempted to ignore all variations and simply analyze the story presented, and it is my pleasure to state that it was not the changes that made the films story un-enjoyable, it was pretty much everything else. It baffles me that so much difficulty is found in adapting something that already has so much compelling and terrific story elements. The X-Men series of comic books is probably one of the best in crafting excellent story with controversial and real world issues. This film however, took those issues, and presented them like an after-school special. I was looking forward to seeing a film about the ever-present prejudice of the world and witness the emotionally painful fallout between Xavier and Magneto, two “brothers” split by their ideals. This film took a different root, only dabbling in this plot points like a scared little girl dipping her toe in the water, finding it too cold. Furthermore, the level of character development was unbelievably low. I found myself having to wait until the credits just to learn the names of some of the characters.
