Why I Liked... X-Men: First Class (2011)

(Dir. Matthew Vaughn Starring: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender)

It’s guy love, love between two guys!

Pure comic book fun-it’s amazing how setting a story such as this back in the sixties makes it...so much more believable? I think that’s the word I’m going for. Because I mean well, in the comics and cartoons, we see these characters in yellow spandex and as we’ve seen from previous, more modern incarnations, they like to wear black leather instead. Which just goes to show-those sixties really were swinging...

Armed with a semi-decent script and a half-decent cast, Vaughn has directed a film that I really enjoyed. The aforementioned script could have been much stronger. As we’ve seen in the popular series Mad Men, the women, while looked down upon, still have an ounce of pride and strength which they craftily make sure doesn’t threaten their male counterparts too much. This is the supposed to be the same world, and yet the female presence in this film was reduced to vanity and sexuality. Which bugged me, to be honest.

I mean, if I had crazy psychic powers, or could change my appearance at will, I would have taken advantage of these fantastic skill sets to further myself in a society that a)looks down on me because I’m a woman, and b)looks down on me because I’m a mutant.

 Judging you.

Which leads me to January Jones as Emma Frost. Either Jones can’t act (which isn’t true because she certainly wasn’t playing a mutant Betty Draper), or she just wasn’t given much to work with. I believe in the latter. Vaughn has said that if he had had enough time, he would have done a much better job than Ratner on the final X-Men 3 movie from the previous trilogy, and maybe he would have. But then he also should have taken more time on this film to prove it.

What did make this film so great that Gillian ended up really enjoying it? Five words:

James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender.

Excuse me while I swoon. Hee.

Really...aside from being perfectly cast and having amazing chemistry with each other (pretty much just each other, to be honest), they were pretty much the only two characters who were fully fleshed out and given more to work with than just being mutants and ‘accepting’ themselves (though if this had been my film, they’d have have had to accept themselves as being totally gay for each other-and then possibly exploring this revelation...). No, Erik/Magneto (Fassbender) and Charles/Professor X (McAvoy) had to duke it out over the ethics of mutancy, and coming out to the world, and in a Harry Potter-esque way, figure out how to harness their powers through the use hatred or through the (preferable) use of serenity.

And frankly, if you’re Erik/Magneto and you’ve been brought up in a Nazi Concentration Camp...well...yeah. As we all knew would happen, Erik and Charles didn’t exactly kiss and make up in the end (against my wishes).

In the end, because of the unrequited love, I mean, friendship between Erik and Charles, X-Men: First Class is much, much better than it could’ve ended up being. Because frankly, the script needs way more work, the supporting cast needs to...well, come of them don’t need to be there, and we have got to stop killing off the minorities. Please. I actually cringed.