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Presented in the original 2.35:1 theatrical ratio and in 1080p high definition, the quality of the print is striking throughout with the picture which looks crisp and clear throughout, bringing the incredible special FX to life. For the record, I’m watching on a Panasonic 37″ Plasma screen via a Samsung BD-P1500 Blu-ray player.
Audio-wise, the film is presented in DTS 5.1 HD Master Audio and there are many fantastic surround sound FX when the mutants use their telekinetic powers to talk to those without that ability as well as explosions aplenty. Turn up the volume and bass to full!
The extras are as follows:
- Cerebro: Mutant Tracker: This is an extra which states: “Cerebro enhances your telepathic abilities so you can locate and learn about various mutants” which is basically showing you one after another of images of 18 mutants from past and present. Press ‘select’ and you’ll get a very brief clip showing several scenes featuring them over all of their movie appearances. Once ‘tracked’ these are added to your ‘Mutant Manifest’ with a short piece of background info about them. This additional certainly promised more than it delivered from the sounds of it at the start.
- Children of the atom (1:09:49): Sebastian coins this term early on in the film that all mutants are the children of the atom.
What we have here is a documentary split into seven segments: Second Genesis, Band of Brothers, Transformation, Suiting Up, New Frontier: A Dose of Style, Pulling Off The Impossible, and Sound and Fury. There’s a lot of information to digest here, but they all follow a familiar path with showing clips from the film mixed with chat from the cast and crew and some of the segment titles are self-explanatory: We see the reasons for making this new film; the character selections – even if they aren’t true to the original comics, although they do state that the continuity between the films is more important that being precise to the continuity of the comics; the look of the cast in their mutant roles; the costumes; getting a sense of style for the locations and the period; the assistance from former Star Wars visual effects designer John Dykstra to give this movie the punch that it needed in that department; and a look at Henry Jackman‘s musical score. Each segment lasts approximately ten minutes.
- Deleted and Extended Scenes (14:07): Thirteen of them here, and all clearly very short given that this segment runs for just a bit longer than the same number of minutes. There are a couple I’d extend, even if they’re only short additions: “The Russian Truck” and “Erik vs. Russian Guards”, especially since the latter was used in full in the promotional material so it was odd to trim it for the movie, although maybe the distributors thought that the use of a knife in the full version was a bit strong in the context when Erik basically happy-slapped the first two guards rather than did anything damaging to them.
- Live Extras: I’ve never managed to get BD Live Extras to work on any disc. Apparently this one will let you connect to the Internet Movie Database to get extra info, but I think most people will be content with using their PC for this rather than the disc they’re watching.
- Composers Isolated Score: Henry Jackman‘s rousing score out on its own.
- Audio descriptive track: The film with added vocal descriptions for those who have poor or no vision.
These extras are okay, but for such a major release I would’ve thought we’d get many more, especially as the sticker on the front proclaims: “Packed with hours of special features”, although the bulk of these are clearly based on the score and audio description. We’re also missing around 20 minutes of footage used on the US release entitled, X Marks The Spot, a series of mini-featurettes used as a feature-length picture-in-picture track, although only filling around a sixth of that time.
The menu features clips of the film set against the movie’s theme. There are subtitles in English and 10 other languages and, thankfully, 20th Century Fox are one of the few distributors still putting a decent number of chapters into their Blu-rays and DVDs. This one has 32 over the 132-minute running time.
X-Men First Class is out now on Blu-ray and DVD.
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FILM CONTENT PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS |
9 10 10 5 |
| OVERALL | 8 |
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 132 minutes
Year: 2011
Cat no: 5098807001
Released: October 31st 2011
Chapters: 32
Picture: 1080p High Definition
Sound: DTS 5.1 HD Master Audio
Languages: English, Czech, Polish, Turkish
Subtitles: English, Portugese, Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, Russian, Czech, Danish, Arabic, Polish, Turkish
Widescreen: 2.35:1 (Anamorphic Panavision)
Disc Format: BD50
Director: Matthew Vaughn
Producers: Gregory Goodman, Simon Kinberg, Lauren Shuler Donner and Bryan Singer
Screenplay: Ashley Miller, Zack Stentz, Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn (from a story by Sheldon Turner and Bryan Singer)
Music: Henry Jackman
Cast:
Charles Xavier: James McAvoy
Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto: Michael Fassbender
Sebastian Shaw: Kevin Bacon
Moira MacTaggert: Rose Byrne
Raven/Mystique: Jennifer Lawrence
Janos Quested/Riptide: Álex González
Azazel: Jason Flemyng
Angel Salvadore: Zoë Kravitz
Emma Frost: January Jones
Hank McCoy/Beast: Nicholas Hoult
Sean Cassidy/Banshee: Caleb Landry Jones
Armando Muñoz/Darwin: Edi Gathegi
The Man in Black: Oliver Platt
Russian General: Rade Serbedzija
Captain: Michael Ironside
Colonel Hendry: Glenn Morshower
Soviet Captain: Olek Krupa
Mrs. Xavier/Mystique: Beth Goddard
Charles Xavier (12 Years): Laurence Belcher
Young Erik: Bill Milner
Young Raven (10 yrs): Morgan Lily
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.