XMEN FIRST CLASS AMAZON DVD MOVIE

McAvoy and Fassbender are absolutely brilliant as two very similar men - charismatic, intelligent, strong-willed - who become fast friends, but are divided by their different views of human nature. And sadly, there is an ugly undercurrent of misogyny running through the story, with all the women explicitly sexualized (there isn't one who doesn't get naked or seminaked).īut on the flipside, the protagonists are AMAZING. She is so annoying that she actually infects any scene she's in. And January Jones - aka 'sparkly Christmas ornament with breasts' - gives a performance like garden tools scraping through a chalkboard. Bacon gives a good performance, but he feels strangely out of place, as if he doesn't quite click into the story. However, director Matthew Vaughn really underplays some important scenes (such as Beast's transformation), and he really beats you over the head with the gay parallels of the mutants ('You didn't ask').Īs for the cast, the villains are pretty lackluster. There are some very striking moments (the FLYING SUBMARINE! Epic!), and some pretty impressive action scenes. Yes, there's a lot of stuff about the Cuban missile crisis and impending nuclear doom, but it feels like it's just a backdrop for the REAL drama.īut it is a pretty fun popcorn movie, though not as powerful as the first two X-Men movies. only to have them splinter off in two very different directions. 'X-Men: First Class' as a pretty fluffy main plot, since its main purpose is to bring Erik and Charles together as best buddies. The mutants begin training themselves so they can use their abilities to the fullest, but they may not be a match for Shaw. With Shaw planning to spark off a nuclear war between Russia and the US, Xavier begins gathering his own group of mutants - including Erik Lensherr, a Holocaust survivor who is hell-bent on killing Shaw.

And the existence of mutants is proven to the government by mind-reading telepath Charles Xavier (McAvoy) and his foster sister Raven (Jennifer Lawrence). In the 1960s, a CIA sting operation discovers that the the cruel Sebastien Shaw (Kevin Bacon) (who is working with the Russians) also has a small group of superpowered mutants who can teleport, read minds, and so on. The story itself is a puff piece used to introduce the characters, but the performances by James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender are absolutely spellbinding. 'X-Men: First Class' goes back to the 1960s to tell the origin stories of both the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Mutants, as well as their charismatic leaders Professor X and Magneto. Yes, this is not the X-Men you're used to. And there's a noticeable lack of dignified old men like Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. For the most part, though, Vaughn does right by playing up the James Bond parallels and acknowledging the debt to producer Bryan Singer through a couple of clever cameos.

XMEN FIRST CLASS AMAZON DVD MOVIE

The movie comes alive whenever they take center stage, and dies a little when they don't. Throughout, Vaughn crisscrosses the globe, piles on the visual effects, and juices the action with a rousing score, but it's the actors who make the biggest impression as McAvoy and Fassbender prove themselves worthy successors to Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. With the help of MIB (Oliver Platt) and Hank (A Single Man's Nicholas Hoult), they seek out other mutants, while fending off Shaw and Emma Frost (Mad Men's January Jones), who try to recruit them for more nefarious ends, leading to a showdown in Cuba between the United States and the Soviet Union, the good and bad mutants, and Charles and Erik, whose goals have begun to diverge. CIA agent Moira (Rose Byrne) brings the two together to work for Division X. By 1962, Charles (James McAvoy) has become a swaggering genetics professor and Erik (Michael Fassbender, McAvoy's Band of Brothers costar) has become a brooding agent of revenge. As children, the mind-reading Charles finds a friend in the shape-shifting Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) and Erik finds an enemy in Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), an energy-absorbing Nazi scientist who treats the metal-bending lad like a lab rat. While Charles Xavier (Laurence Belcher) grows up privileged in New York, Erik Lehnsherr (Bill Milner) grows up underprivileged in Poland. When Bryan Singer brought Marvel's X-Men to the big screen, Magneto and Professor X were elder statesmen, but Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass) travels back in time to present an origin story-and an alternate version of history.

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