X Men : First Class

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Review by Anthony Morris

It is prequel time once again in Hollywood, and after pretty much flushing the X-Men franchise down the toilet with the dubious third instalment (Wolverine's solo outing was a joke), it's time to step back into the past and get this thing started again.

This time around we look at the lives of Professor X (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) in the hope that setting things in the swinging 1960s will make everyone forget just how badly things went wrong.

The good news is, for the most part, it works perfectly.

After a few brief scenes set in 1944 where Xavier / Professor X and Erik / Magneto are revealed to have had very different childhoods, it’s off to 1962.

Xavier and his adopted sister Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) are hanging around Oxford (in Xavier's case, using his mind powers to hit on the ladies) while Erik is a full-time Nazi hunter, and when a sinister figure from his past (Kevin Bacon) comes to the attention of CIA agent Moria McTaggert (Rose Byrne) she ends up knocking on Xavier’s door for his expertise in the so-far unknown world of "mutants".

In some ways this X-Men : First Class' biggest success is that director Michael Vaughn (Kick-Ass) keeps such a sprawling story and massive cast (the good and bad guys have their own squad of mutants) under control; in other ways its biggest success is in making all this a lot of fun.

The bad guys are operating firmly from the James Bond villain handbook, Xavier says "groovy" more than once, the whole Mad Men look works well and there's a bunch of fun cameos to watch out for inbetween some pretty solid action scenes.

The X-Men movies have one big advantage over pretty much every other superhero franchise: they are actually about something.

No-one is going to suggest that their treatment of prejudice and discrimination is all that insightful – it is discrimination against mostly good looking people with super powers  – but it does give this a little more weight than films like Thor and Iron Man (which this is at least as good as).

It does end up biting off a little more than it can comfortably handle towards the end but it hardly falls apart, and rock-solid performances from both McAvoy and Fassbender as the only two characters we really care about is more than enough to make X-Men : First Class the most impressive X-Men movie to date.

DVD Special Features

Alright, now this is impressive. Fox obviously didn't make as much cash at the Box Office as they'd hoped so are really pushing the DVD market to squeeze some moola out of the franchise fans.

There is more than two hours of never-before-seen extras on the DVD and Blu Ray editions including:

• Cerebro Mutant Tracker: The complete interactive Mutant Database with interactive videos giving fans the ability to learn about their favorite mutants in the X-Men film franchise

• Children of the Atom: An eight-part behind-the-scenes featurette, charting the film from pre-production through post-production, including visual effects techniques and cataloguing “X-Men” transformations through prosthetic make up and costume design

• "X" Marks the Spot: An interactive feature allowing viewers the opportunity to learn more about specific scenes with talent interviews and behind-the-scenes footage

• Extended and Deleted Scenes

• BD-Live Portal with additional Cerebro Mutant Tracker profiles

• Composer’s Isolated Score

• Theatrical Trailer

Conclusion: Movie 80% Extras: 80%