X-Men: First Class Review Or: How Magneto Solved The Cuban Missile Crisis

X-Men: First Class Review OR: Marvel’s Merry Mutants Make Movie Madness

Also, alliteration is awesome.

Many film buffs mistakenly believe that the current wave of comic book movies began with 2000’s X-Men. While the argument could be made that 1998’s Blade was the first modern comic book movie to return respectability to the genre in a post Batman&Robin world, it was Bryan Singer’s X-Men that conclusively proved that comic book movies could not only be financially profitable but well-acted and directed as well. Since then, Hollywood as produced an astounding number of properties based on their comic book counterparts and the flood shows no sign of stopping any time soon. This summer alone features the already released Thor, the upcoming Green Lantern and Captain America and the movie which is the subject of this review, X-Men: First Class.

First Class, the fifth entry in the X-Men movie series if one counts 2009’s Wolverine: Origins, is on shaky ground as far as its responsibility to the franchise is concerned. X-Men and its sequel X2: X-Men United are well regarded works of cinema, loved by both critics and fans alike. While 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand, directed by fanboy lightning rod Brett Ratner, was the most commercially successful of the initial trilogy, its artistic merits were a matter of some debate. And the less said about poor Hugh Jackman’s attempt to make an R-rated character into a PG-13 movie in Wolverine:Origins the better. While the money kept pouring in, the fans were growing less and less enthusiastic with each installment.

The franchise needed a serious hit of adrenaline if it hoped to win back the multitude of fans getting ready to jump ship. Enter: Matthew Vaughn. Originally scheduled to direct The Last Stand when Bryan Singer left Wolverine and the gang to go direct Superman Returns, Vaughn had some minor issues with the studio executives and ended up leaving the project for greener pastures. He finally contributed an entry to the comic book genre with last year’s Kick-Ass, a faithful adaption of Mark Millar’s endlessly entertaining treatise on the nature of superheroes, thus easily establishing himself as a more than competent director of comic book action movies. But the question remains: Can Vaughn deliver the goods and restore the X-Men franchise to its former glory? Or does this mutant need to locked away somewhere secure where it can’t harm the general public?

Read on, my faithful lackeys, this is TheMatt’s review of X-Men: First Class, opening this Friday in theaters everywhere.

---

Continue with the X-Men: First Class full review and verdict on the next page…