For a long time, I thought of X-men First Class as the underdog of 2011's superhero movies, but I'm pleased to say that it surprised me and it might just be the movie to beat. So to answer the question I posed in the teaser, yes. It pretty much is.
WARNING! This article contains spoilers! However, I do try to mark the point where I transition to heavy spoilers, so you can read the first half pretty much spoiler-free.
A while back, I was very skeptical of this movie. I'm not one of the people who just hates on Fox's X-men movies. For me, they've proven they can make a good X-men movie. Over the course of this movie's development, there were just a lot of things that made it look like it wasn't going to turn out well.
Let's start off from the beginning. A few years ago we heard they were doing X-men prequels including Wolverine and Magneto. Wolverine was made but Magneto got derailed. Eventually elements of the Magneto plot were incorporated into First Class. So we accepted that we were getting the origin of Xavier and Magneto along with the founding of the X-men. Then details started coming out about the plot and fans were soon to realize pretty obvious contradictions with the comic book story and established continuity.
The most significant contradiction to the comic book was the line-up of Xavier's first class. X-men fans know that Xavier's first five students were Cyclops, Jean Grey, Angel, Beast, and Iceman. However, the thing I find ironic about this is that the people who complain the most about breaking away from the comics are also the same people who want it to stick firmly to the movie continuity. Following the movie continuity, there's no way you could have the original comic book first 5 because Iceman is introduced as a teenager in the first X-men movie and Angel meets the X-men for the first time in X-men 3. If you want to make sense, you really have to pick one or the other to complain about. Anyway there were a few continuity errors that fans were aware about for quite some time before the release of the movie.
1. Emma Frost was featured as a teenager in Wolverine and is featured as an adult in First Class, which takes place before Wolverine. Technically, they never called her by name in Wolverine, but it was very strongly implied.
2. Beast is shown to transform into his blue form over the course of X-men First Class. However, Beast made a cameo in X-men 2 in his pre-transformed state
3. Probably the most significant thing I've been able to find, is that in X-men 3, Charles and Erik go to visit a young Jean Grey at her house. This event is supposed to occur 20 years before the events of the movie which came out in 2006, so let's say this happens in roughly 1986. This scene reveals that in 1986 Professor Xavier was still able to walk and was still working with Magneto. X-men First Class, as you are probably aware, takes place mostly in 1962 and tells the story of Xavier and Magneto's friendship and how they end up on opposing sides.
Really, the plot elements of the 3rd continuity flaw were the only very significant things that I saw that got in the way of this movie being watchable with the rest of the series as a flowing part of the story. However I decided to put all that aside and judge this firmly as a standalone movie.
I'll start with Xavier and Magneto since they're the main focus of the movie. First off, James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender were great in their roles. They really had a lot to live up to since both Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan gave great performances in the original 3 movies, but McAvoy and Fassbender managed to make the roles their own while still feeling like they could be the younger versions of the characters we already knew. I've always wanted to see a movie that was very focused on their relationship and this movie did a solid job there. I really liked the scene in which they first met, but I don't want to spoil that. I will get more in depth in the spoiler section, but for now I'll just leave it at that.
The overall story was pretty strong and kept me interested the whole time. I think the choice to have the Cold War and the Cuban missile crisis play such a prominent role in the movie paid off and helped make their world feel real. The action was good, I'd probably say better than what I was expecting. It doesn't take itself too seriously, but it's definitely a little bit darker and more serious than Iron Man or Thor. I'll transition to my spoiler section now so I can talk more in depth about the movie, so to wrap it up for those of you who don't want to be spoiled, X-men First Class gets and A from me so go see it and then come back and read the rest of this article.
SPOILERS from this point on!
One of the things I really enjoyed about the movie was the way they told Magneto's story. I thought it was very cool how they reshot the first scene from the original X-men and continued that story. The most brilliant thing about it to me was the helmet and how much it symbolized if you really think about it. Sebastian Shaw was the character that made Magneto who he was, but he was also a method of foreshadowing who he would become. Their beliefs were very similar and the way Magneto assumes the position as leader of Shaw's former group really solidified the similarity between the two.
The helmet was a great tool to highlight this because it's very much a part of the iconic image of Magneto. Seeing Shaw wearing the helmet leads us to instantly draw comparisons to Magneto. When Magneto goes to confront him, Shaw is still wearing the helmet and he's still the one with the power and control over the situation. Magneto taking the helmet is a huge moment for the character. For one thing, he gains control over the situation and the balance of power shifts. For another, the helmet blocks Charles from communicating with him or reading his mind. When Charles was able to get into his mind, it really helped to bring them together as friends because he could feel his emotions and help guide him. Magneto shutting off his mind from Charles directly relates to him turning his back on Charles' friendship and beliefs.
I gotta say, I loved the two cameos. Hugh Jackman's cameo was hilarious and just felt like the perfect way to include Wolverine in the story. Rebecca Romijn's cameo was fitting and a clever way to work her into the movie.
One of the movie's flaws that I noted was the underdevelopment of Professor Xavier's romance with Moira McTaggert. They really didn't show that much interaction between them. She was important at the beginning and the end, but during the middle she didn't really do much.
Also, while Xavier and Magneto's relationship was very well done, in a way, I felt it was rushed. I've always gotten the sense that Xavier and Magneto's friendship lasted for many years before falling apart. Because of that, I'm very conflicted. I thought telling the whole story from meeting to separating made this movie very strong. However, I don't believe they were able to convincingly show them become very close friends by having them only know each other for a few months. The Star Wars prequel trilogy took 3 whole movies to tell the story of Obi-wan and Anakin's relationship. Regardless of how you feel about the quality of those movies, just knowing the amount of time they spent together made it convincing that they had become close by the time we saw them as enemies in Episode 3.
I've heard they intend First Class to be the start of a new series of X-men movies. While I loved everything about Xavier and Magneto's final scene together in the movie, I think ideally I would have postponed that until the end of the third movie of a trilogy. This way, we could see more of how their relationship develops and it would line up well with the 1986 visit to Jean Grey's house, making the six movies flow perfectly. It also would give the story arc of the series more direction and momentum as it continued into the second and third movies.
If we're looking at Wolverine to give us an idea of the order of events, we know that teenage Scott Summers meets a wheelchair bound Professor Xavier at the end of that movie, meaning that the incident with Magneto would have to have occurred after they met Jean but before they met Scott. Since trying to fit into the established story complicates things so much, it might have been a better decision to make this new movie series completely separate from the original series giving them more freedom to include certain characters whenever they wanted to.
One last thing I would have done differently was the movie's final scene. I think it would have been stronger if that was the only time over the course of the movie we ever heard the word Magneto. They should have taken out Mystique's suggestion of the name, and just had him say at the end "Call me Magneto." This would have helped to increase the significance of the moment and ending the movie on that would have therefore been cooler.
To sum up my overall thoughts, X-men First Class is a very good movie, but it leaves me a little bit concerned about the future of the series because I'm worried they might have sacrificed a great multi-movie story for the sake of making a great standalone movie.