Skip to content
X-Men First Class begins back in Poland, 1944 like the opening of the first X-Men film, where a young Erik is seen attempting to open the gates at Auschwitz through special powers.
Cut to Westchester, New York, 1944 and a young Charles Xavier (Laurence Belcher) apparently sees his mother in the kitchen, who wants to make him a hot chocolate, but he senses precisely that his mother has never been in their kitchen for anything at all, and the imposter reveals herself to be a young Raven (Morgan Lily), who was homeless but over time he has treated as his sister during their life together.
Erik is then being talked at by Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) who has an interest in genes and that mutant aspect to this, and knows the lad has a lot of power and so tells him to move a coin, but he can’t until Shaw threatens to execute his mother at which point he shows the full force he can muster…
From here on the plot jumps about over various locations and on to 1962 where Erik is in Geneva, plotting revenge on Shaw, then over to Oxford University where Charles is showing off his lothario skills by effortlessly chatting up a young lady while Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) tries to show off, causing them to leave. Shaw then tries to persuade Col. Bob Hendry (Glenn Morshower), who CIA agent Moira MacTaggert (Rose Byrne) is staking out, to put Jupiter missiles in Turkey and do his bit to make the Cold War even worse. Hendry is dead against this, but we know how persuasive the bad mutants can be.
The link between Rose and Charles comes when she needs his help to get to the bottom of this, and in a meeting with the CIA bigwigs, our professor states in his wise words that over time the human race has mutated in many forms along the way, and that the nuclear age may have accelerated the process.
Cue lots of new recruits who are brought along to help take care of Shaw, namely Angel (Zoë Kravitz) – who can fly, Hank McCoy (Nicholas Hoult), who later becomes Beast, Banshee (Caleb Landry Jones) – who can fly with the use of creating sonic waves with his voice, Darwin (Edi Gathegi) – who is trained to adapt and survive, and Havok (Lucas Till) – who shoots out hoops of fire. All of the actors provide decent support, as do those on the side of the baddies, namely Álex González as Riptide – who sends tornados at whoever he feels, an unrecognisable Jason Flemyng as the teleporting Azazel and January Jones as Emma Frost – who can protect herself with a diamond-encrusted exoskeleton.
There’s also a role for the omnipresent Oliver Platt, cast simply here as “The Man in Black”, but full credit goes particularly to the two leads, James McAvoy as Charles Xavier, aka Professor X, and Michael Fassbender (below-left with McAvoy) as Erik Lehnsherr, aka Magneto, both of whom are superb and provide as good a match as any pairing can in these roles, even if no pairing could ever be on a par with the might of Patrick Stewart and Ian McKelen.
Complementing the cast are plenty of lush locations and there a few with big names, even in smaller parts, such as Twin Peaks‘ Ray Wise as a Secretary of State in the war room and Michael Ironside and a ship’s captain, plus Rade Serbedzija proving he’s the go-to Russian bigwig and a cameo from Hugh Jackman as, well, you know who.
In X-Men: First Class, we learn the origins of Magneto’s helmet, how Charles was put in a wheelchair and also the divisions between who’s on each other’s side. Overall, the film goes on a little too long, but it does have some outstanding scenes of special effects and great comaraderie between the whole cast so I’ll be looking forward to the expected sequels. I’d give the film 9/10 overall as it’s certainly the most well-rounded X-Men movie to date, so if I was a lazy tabloid journalist I’d be saying it doesn’t deserve ‘First Class’ honours, but a 2(i) will suffice.
But I’m not. So it’s 9/10. The end.
Oh, but I will add how apt it is that the jaw-dropping Jennifer Lawrence (below) in X-Men First Class also starred in “Winter’s Bone”… (ahem)
Go to page 2 for the presentation and the extras.
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.
|
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.
| 1 | 2 |