DVD Review - X-Men First Class

As my movie going has been slowed down by festive season tomfoolery, here is a DVD review for your pleasure.

X-Men First Class absolutely lives up to its title even though that's not what it meant.  First class.  This series really needed a top quality prequel, and it got it.  During the X-Men trilogy you understood that Professor X and Magneto had been friends in their younger days before becoming arch enemies on the front of mutant vs human relations.  However, what I, and I'm sure many others, have wondered is how did they go from being close friends to enemies?  What could have gone so wrong when they should be on the same side?  Well this film will very satisfactorily answer that question.

The first thing the producers did right was the choice of director.  Matthew Vaughn has had a short but stellar directing career.  On a percentage basis of how many of their movies I thought were excellent, I'd have to say Mr Vaugh gets 100% from me so far.  Layer Cake (low key UK crim caper), Stardust (fairytale action with De Niro in a dress gets my vote), Kick Ass (no need to explain) and now X-Men.  He handles this really well, giving it a fantastic 60s setting and smooth action scenes.

The second thing they did right was casting James McAvoy as Charles Xavier (future Professor X) and Michael Fassbender as Erik Lenssher (future Magneto).  Both actors are very skilled and not distracting because they aren't big stars despite being in some pretty good movies before.  They have great chemistry and McAvoy is particularly good as X, it's so fun to see him as a ladies man in his younger days.

The third thing they did right was not mess up the story. The discovery of mutants, the genesis of the establishment of a mutant force by the government to combat the Russian nuclear threat (which soon turns out to be the wrong enemy with a wild mutant Kevin Bacon running amok trying to dominate the world), and the training of the young mutants into their powers prove to be storylines that are both thought provoking and hugely entertaining.

The two young actors playing the future Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) and The Beast (Nicholas Hoult) are especially good as well, bringing a bit of playful romance into the story.  These insights into the younger versions of the characters you know so well are great and nothing that they do doesn't fit with the later movies.  A few knowing winks to the future are thrown in as well.

The whole thing was just a very classy action movie, I found it captured my attention the whole team and was really fun.  Definitely see this if you are a fan of the X-Men characters or movies (you don't have to have seen the previous trilogy at all but it might make it a little more enjoyable if you did).