{"id":15203,"date":"2011-06-05T21:26:56","date_gmt":"2011-06-06T05:26:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=15203"},"modified":"2011-06-19T22:27:43","modified_gmt":"2011-06-20T06:27:43","slug":"x-men-first-class-matthew-vaugh-2011-usa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=15203","title":{"rendered":"X-Men: First Class (Matthew Vaughn, 2011): USA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Richard Feilden<\/a>. \u00a0Viewed at Metropolitan Camino Real Theatre, Goleta.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>This is all getting rather confusing now.\u00a0 The remake machine has become the reboot machine.\u00a0 Unlike some of the other superhero reboots around (The Incredible Hulk, next year\u2019s Spider-Man), X-Men: First Class<\/a> doesn\u2019t seem to want to throw the box-office-smash-baby out with the bathwater.\u00a0 So, with an (almost) entirely new cast, we go down memory lane and see where, or rather when, it all began.<\/p>\n

Back in the 1960s, Charles (soon to be Professor X) Xavier ( James McAvoy) is an unreasonably wealthy, sexually liberated genetics student, and Eric (not yet Magneto) Lensherr (Michael Fassbender) is an internment camp survivor and one-man Nazi hunting machine.\u00a0 Though from widely disparate backgrounds, the two young mutants form a fast, if uneasy, friendship.\u00a0 They take a group of children under their wings, trying to educate and protect them from a far older super-powered individual, an opportunist named Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), who thrives in conflict and is currently seeking to push the US and USSR into starting World War Three.<\/p>\n

This is yet another super-hero origin story, but unlike most of the other Marvel and DC adaptations, this one has to cram more than half a dozen starts into its 132 minute running time.\u00a0 This leaves the first act of the film feeling pretty crowded and often without\u00a0 Magneto involved, and that\u2019s a problem.\u00a0 The film really belongs to him.\u00a0 Unlike McAvoy, who while not going \u2018full McGregor\u2019 (as all attempts by a young actor to mimic the performance of an older, established character must be known post Star Wars Episode 1), does seem constrained by the studied calm of Patrick Stewart\u2019s Professor X, Fassbender abandons any attempt to impersonate or mimic Ian McKellen\u2019s Magneto.\u00a0 He makes no attempt to disguise his natural accent, nor to reign in the angry-young-man persona that fits the younger Lensherr so well.\u00a0 Others<\/a> have derided Fassbender\u2019s performance as too distant from McKellen\u2019s, but they have missed the point.\u00a0 Fassbender makes the role his own, and the film is better for it. \u00a0He is, though I fear to pun so crassly, magnetic.<\/p>\n

The supporting actors \u00a0are a bit of a mixed bunch.\u00a0 The younger mutants acquit themselves pretty well, but January Jones, playing telepath Emma Frost, seems to have taken the valium addled 50s housewife role from TV\u2019s Mad Men to heart.\u00a0 Her Frost is so inert, it feels as though she\u2019s downed a handful of \u2018mommy\u2019s little helpers\u2019 along the way.<\/p>\n

Given its 60s setting, the film has to tread a fine line between historical relevancy and Austin Powers kitsch.\u00a0 It manages this for the most part, although when a CIA agent strips to her stockings-and-suspenders underwear, which she apparently always wears on stake-outs, so that she can sneak into an exclusive member\u2019s club, the film slips firmly into misogynistic camp.\u00a0 It\u2019s an unfortunate scene in a film where the mutant characters strive to be accepted for who they are regardless of how they look.\u00a0 It\u2019s not who you are, not how brilliant an agent nor how beautiful your personality beneath your scaly blue exterior, but how conventionally hot you look in your improbable undies that counts.<\/p>\n

The story, once it gets past the lumbering first act, cracks along at a reasonable, if not head-spinning, pace, and doesn\u2019t sag too badly under its fairly long running time.\u00a0 There are a few gags for the original\u2019s fans in here (along with a cameo or two), but the material is explained well enough for anyone who hasn\u2019t seen the first four films to get the gist.\u00a0 Overall, it\u2019s not a bad attempt to breathe life back into a franchise which had been hamstrung by its two recent, lackluster additions.\u00a0 For director Vaughn it’s certainly a step up from the inconsistent and overrated Kick-Ass. \u00a0Following on from the reasonable, though more flawed, Thor, the summer\u2019s supero-hero fest is off to a pretty good start.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Richard Feilden. \u00a0Viewed at Metropolitan Camino Real Theatre, Goleta. This is all getting rather confusing now.\u00a0 The remake machine has become the reboot machine.\u00a0 Unlike some of the other superhero reboots around (The Incredible Hulk, next year\u2019s Spider-Man), X-Men: First Class doesn\u2019t seem to want to throw the box-office-smash-baby out with the bathwater.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15203\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}