X-Men: First Class – ‘Can Do Better’

Internet discussions of the latest in the X-Men series have spawned a meme that summarises this particular installment of the franchise. Those of you who’ve seen the trailer might even recognise this dialogue between Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Erik ‘Magneto’ Lensherr (Michael Fassbender) – “…my friend, killing will not bring you peace,” says Charles, to which Erik replies, “Peace was never an option.” Fan-oidal funniness has lent itself to a messageboard joke that involves structuring every comment and sentence by beginning it with ‘my friend’ and inserting ‘will not bring you peace’ at the end i.e. “My friend, farting will not bring you peace.” But this exchange is really the gravamen of the film.

X-Men: First Class takes us back to the very beginning, to the early days of the Cold War, when highly gifted telepath Charles and metal-controller Erik had not yet become Professor X and Magneto, when they hadn’t even met. Helped by CIA agent Moira MacTaggart (Rose Byrne), they unite to train other lost young people, each with superhuman mutations, to defend humankind against the evil of Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) and his sidekick Emma Frost (January Jones). We are introduced to a young Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) and Beast (Nicholas Hoult) among others. We are shown how Erik goes over to the dark side and becomes Charles’ nemesis for life.

Now, here’s the thing: I liked this movie OK. X-M:FC is a half-decent film that accomplishes the vital task of rebooting the franchise to its original Singer-ian slickness and manages to gather momentum for a more engaging couple of sequels. However, it would be unfair to fall prey to seemingly popular opinion manufactured by the excitable mass media and declare this ‘the best superhero movie ever.’ That honour still belongs to The Dark Knight, closely followed by Spider-Man 2. What X-Men 4 did was restore the lost honour of Xavier and Magneto, after Brett Ratner ripped it to shreds in The Last Stand, and despite being somewhat slipshod and scattered, set the stage for what could be an impressive second film. As the decade has attested to, second films usually have their sea legs in place and a much better canvas to sketch the story out on, so Xavier vs. Magneto has a fair shot at scaling heights provided director Matthew Vaughn returns with McAvoy and Fassbender.

I cannot state enough how much this film owes to the powerhouse performances from the two British leads, who carry the film like a pair of Atlases. Summoning the best male chemistry since Clooney and Pitt in the Ocean’s movies, McBender owns this film like the kings they are in the X-Men universe, their complicated, intense and poignant bromance beating at the heart of the high-octane, ballistic ballet that an action film is supposed to deliver. Their dynamic brought a dimension of depth to the otherwise patchy and inconsistent script, rescuing and reining it in. Magneto in particular had me both fascinated and frustrated. My fascination I owe to Fassbender’s delicate handling of character, wonderfully calibrated through his psychological damage as he alternates between cold-blooded murderer and sympathetic mentor. The frustration is to be blamed on the screenplay, which fails to hold up the motivations and convictions that make Erik who he is, turning him into an inconstant egomaniac, rather than rewarding the audience (and his portrayer’s hard work) with a morally torn angry young mutant. It is all to Fassbender’s credit that I was able to leave the theatre not so sure whose side I would have picked, which I consider the thematic triumph of the movie.

McAvoy is, of course, fantastic as always, the rational moderator between humans and mutants and the perfect foil for Magneto’s extremism. The potency he brings to his role as the Good Guy outdoes even Patrick Stewart (who plays his older version in the earlier films) and draws the viewer into the burden of responsibility that he has chosen to bear for all his life; we shatter with him in the end, a very rare feat for any performer to pull off in a big budget action movie like this one. Kevin Bacon was very underused, his impressive ability to balance camp with seriousness was flattened out in the character of Shaw, a rather one-dimensional villain, unworthy of Bacon. We are never given any insight into his black heart or cruel mind, apart from him doing villainous things. That’s really not enough and a lesser actor would have completely botched the role.

I was almost offended by January Jones’ Emma Frost, slightly because she didn’t do a very good job of playing her but mainly because the script itself deprived her of much opportunity to do so, reducing the White Queen to a sexist stereotype of a femme fatale, much like the Mystique of earlier films. Speaking of whom, of the younger lot, it is Jennifer Lawrence who shines and that perhaps is because her character, blue-skinned shapeshifter and Charles’ adoptive sister, Raven/Mystique gets that much more of a background although her role is not very well-imagined either, her adolescent insecurities about her appearance and attempts to seek validation from the men around her achingly familiar to anyone who’s hit puberty…well, some more than others. The queer subtext of the film could not have been more overt – ‘Mutant and proud’ is really a tagline for the homosexual undercurrent that has always been encoded in the X-Men series, different from and yet more than equal to heterosexual society due to possible genetic predispositions. In fact, many prefer to read X-Men as a tragic love story between Erik and Charles, with all the markers of a romance. In the current political climate, when gay rights have once again emerged at the forefront of America’s consciousness, perhaps the conflict between Erik and Charles is that much more urgent and divisive. And maybe why I felt much more sympathetic to Erik after all, if the script had anything all to do with that.

What I liked were the action sequences, supremely well-shot and executed with a dexterity that justifies the adaptation of comic books to live-action. I normally nod off when stuff is being blown up so the fact that I leaned forward in my seat this time is significant. There’s some truly stunning use of effects that compel rather than confuse. I also appreciated how the director maintained the sense of the period throughout, not just in terms of production design and art direction but even in the way that he filmed some parts of the film, bringing out the vintage tension between the US and USSR like fine celluloid wine. For fleeting seconds, I felt like I was watching an old Bond movie and that was a good feeling to’ve had in the middle of a film set in the ‘60s. Matthew Vaughn has given us some ‘good shite’ like Kick-Ass, which proved that handling characters and choreography were not difficult for him. He does need a tighter, more disciplined bunch of character arcs and meatier groundwork in terms of a storyline. And that may happen with the next film, if he sticks around.

Most people who go to watch the film will enjoy it, certainly, but that can be said of most effect-laden blockbusters these days. I am not so sure about loving or even liking it very much but I think it’s only fair to give this a chance to not only return the franchise to form (which it does admirably) but take forward the tale of the X-Men (which it has all the potential to). You’ll definitely not come out thinking that you’ve wasted money and may even start getting stoked for the next one. School isn’t out yet.