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Released by: 20th Century Fox
Released on: September 9, 2011.
Director: Matthew Vaughn
Cast: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Kevin Bacon
Year: 2011
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The Movie:
Directed by Matthew Vaughn, he of Kick-Ass fame, and based on a script credited to a half dozen writers (!), X-Men: First Class begins during the Second World War where a Nazi scientist named Dr. Schmidt (Kevin Bacon) discovers that one of the Jewish children in the concentration camp he overseas, Erik Lensherr, has powerful mutant abilities - something made all the more obvious when Schmidt shoots dead Erik's mother, sending him into the first of many uncontrollable fits of anger. From there, we fast forward a few years to the sixties where American and Russia are at the height of international tensions and on the verge of nuclear war. Erik is now a grown man (and played by Michael Fassbender) and is on the hunt for Schmidt, hoping to avenge his mother's death, though Schmidt has decided to hide his past and change his name and now goes by Sebastian Shaw. He hangs out with a hot blonde named Emma Frost (January Jones) who has the ability to turn into diamond, and is intent on turning the screws tight on both sides of the Cuban Missile Crisis in order to instigate a Third World War. Why? Because he too is a mutant and he figures that mutants are superior to humans. They're never going to trust those who are different from them anyway, so why not wipe them out and let the mutants have free reign?
While Erik is trying to track down Shaw, a CIA agent named Moira MacTaggert (Rose Byrne) enlists the help of a professor of genetics named Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) for exactly the same reason - to help her find Shaw. Eventually the CIA gets Xavier in on their plans to stop Shaw and he puts together a team of mutants who will eventually be dubbed The X-Men (because they're not G-men, get it?). This team is made up of a winged stripper who goes by the codename of Angel (Zoe Kravitz), a taxi driver who ran take on the qualities of anything he touches codenamed Darwin (Edi Gathegi), a redheaded Irish guy with a powerful scream codenamed Banshee (Caleb Landree Jones), the strong and brilliant but animalistic Dr. Hank McCoy (Nicholas Hoult) dubbed The Beast, Xavier's half sister Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) codenamed Mystique for her ability to take on the physical properties of anyone she sees, and a young man who can propel massive blasts of energy out of his body codenamed Havoc (Lucas Till). They'll work together with Erik and Charles to stop Shaw - but not everyone will be the same by the time it's over, if they can even succeed in their mission in the first place.
That's kind of a long and disjointed rundown of what is a fairly typical good guys versus bad guys story, but it gets the idea across. This is, as the title implies, a prequel that tells the tale of Xavier's 'first class' of mutant students. Much time is spent with he and Erik gathering up the best mutants they can find (there's a fun Wolverine cameo here) and then training them to be able to use their abilities for good - all the while we know how it's going to turn out for Charles and Erik and where their relationship is heading. What makes this work, however, are the two lead performances from James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender respectively. They're both very well cast and quite fun in the roles, and they collectively help this one from sinking when it could have very easily sunk. Kevin Bacon is also quite good as the main bad guy, while the impossibly named January Jones vamps it up and adds some sex appeal to her Emma Frost character (those who grew up reading the comics in the eighties will remember this lingerie clad hottie as some pretty serious masturbation fodder! Right? Whose with me?!?). The rest of the cast are fine, just not all that memorable, so it's up to McAvoy and Fassbender to do all the heavy lifting.
Let's be honest though, this is a movie more concerned with heavy handed allegory (lines like 'they didn't ask and I didn't tell' and a scene involving a discussion of prejudice in front of the Lincoln Memorial are groan inducing) and big explosive action scenes than the more serious side of dramatics, and the movie takes care of that side of things in typical Hollywood fashion. It's all very much computer generated (and it's hard to imagine it being done any other way on this scale), some done rather well and some not, but there's plenty of it. Stuff blows up, people fight, more stuff blows up, missiles fly all over the place, and mutants do cool superhero stuff. We're not reinventing the superhero movie wheel here by any stretch but as far as the entertainment factor is concerned, you could do worse. There are plenty of changes made from the comic book source material but so too are there some fun nods to movie's roots that fans will pick up on. On top of that, yeah, lots of guys fight, some hot chicks run around in skimpy outfits, and stuff blows up - this is fun escapism in a very pure form and if not the best of the series so far, a good way to kill two hours without having to think too much.
Video/Audio/Extras:
X-Men: First Class debuts on Blu-ray in a 2.35.1 1080p AVC encoded high definition anamorphic widescreen transfer. Despite the abundance of CGI giving the film a somewhat cartoonish look in certain scenes (primarily the last half hour or so), there's a lot of detail here, particularly in close up shots. Color reproduction is nice and natural looking while black levels are strong and deep. A few shots lean towards the soft side of things but overall this is a really well authored disc of some great looking source material. Don't expect any problems with edge enhancement or compression artifacts, you won't see any, while textures and skin tones all look very realistic. All in all you really couldn't expect the movie to look a whole lot better than it does here and it's hard to imagine anyone complaining about the job Fox has done. This looks outstanding.
The primary audio track is an English language DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio track though standard definition DTS 5.1 mixes are offered up in English, French and Spanish. Subtitles are supplied in all three languages as well. This is an amazingly aggressive mix that'll really give your surround sound system a work out. There's loads of easily discernable surround activity present throughout the film, some subtle but most rather obvious (especially during the battle and action scenes) and it always sounds really tight and well mixed. The levels are properly balanced, there are no issues with hiss or distortion at all, and dialogue is always clean and clear, never buried in the action sequences and always easy to understand. This is demo quality material here, the movie sounds fantastic.
Extras kick off with a production featurette entitled X Marks The Spot which runs about twenty minute or so. You can watch this through an interactive viewing mode, which when enabled pops up various production related bits in a scene specific manner, or you can watch it as a standalone featurette. This covers pretty much all the key aspects of the production, from effects to photography to editing to post production work. Also included is the Cerebro: Mutant Tracker which, when enabled, lets you basically access a knowledge base made up of facts about each of the mutant characters in the film as well as some pertinent clips.
The best of the supplements is the eight-part featurette series Children of the Atom. Clocking in at almost seventy minute in length, this is a very extensive piece that covers everything from what was changed in the journey from comic to film to casting to effects work to storytelling techniques to make up effects, sound design, lighting, camera work and more. Lots of great interviews and clips here - thorough and quite interesting!
Rounding out the extras are fourteen minute of deleted and extended scenes, the option to enjoy Henry Jackman's isolated score, the film's original theatrical trailer, menus, chapter stops, and a digital copy of the film included on a second disc.
The Final Word:
About as subtle with its political subtext as a kick in the nuts, X-Men: First Class is never the less a pretty entertaining movie. Hollywood pap, yes, to a certain degree, but still a fun film with some great characters, two strong lead performances and lots of stuff blowing up. Fox's Blu-ray looks and sounds amazing and throws some decent supplements into the mix as well. Fans of the franchise should be pleased.
Click on the images below for full size Blu-ray screen caps!
