Film review: X-Men: First Class

Putting the "x" in exhausted, the double-whammy of X-Men: Last Stand and the cumbersomely titled X-Men Origins: Wolverine looked as if it might have brought one of Marvel's more interesting movie franchises to a premature and somewhat ignoble end. X-Men: First Class, however, shows there's life left in the series yet.

Directed by Matthew Vaughn (who pulled out of directing the third film to make Kick-Ass), it's certainly a more fitting companion piece to Bryan Singer's first two movies. Those had their faults, but they were good enough to kick-start and sustain the current Golden Age of superhero films, primarily because Singer – who co-wrote the story for First Class and serves as its producer – understood that, by infusing the films with the rich allegorical subtexts of the original comics, he could help ground their sillier aspects and ensure even mainstream audiences would be able to relate to a bunch of oddly named, oddly shaped and oddly costumed mutants.

The spine of those films was the ideological divide between X-Men leader Charles Xavier (aka Professor X) and mutant revolutionary Erik Lehnsherr (aka Magneto), so it's small wonder that First Class winds the clock back to the 1960s to sketch out the roots of their complex relationship and subsequent enmity.

Like Wolverine, it's another prequel rather than a back-to-the-drawing-board reboot; unlike Wolverine, it doesn't make the mistake of exploring in needless detail plot points that have already been well covered in the previous films.

Having said that, the opening scene is a shot-for-shot recreation of X-Men's Nazi death camp beginning. But don't worry. After quickly establishing the Holocaust traumas inflicted upon the adolescent Erik, as well as the charmed-but-isolated life of well-to-do brainbox Charles, the film flashes forward to the early 1960s where we soon discover that the metal-manipulating Erik (played by Michael Fassbender) has morphed into a globetrotting, charismatic, but ruthlessly cold-blooded Nazi hunter, while Charles has become a charming, somewhat eccentric academic, one who isn't averse to using his superior, telepathically enhanced brain power to hit on beautiful women.

The confident spark both actors bring to proceedings – as bold and entertaining in their own ways as Hugh Jackman's first appearance was as Wolverine – immediately lets the film settle into a groove that pays tribute to the earlier films without being slavishly reverential. It helps that neither try to channel Ian McKellen or Patrick Stewart, their respective counterparts in the other films.

Instead they make the characters their own, with Fassbender in particular shining in the meatier role as he transforms the future Magneto into a sympathetic bad-ass whose disdain for humanity is predicated on his experiences with the Nazis and their legions of "just following orders" footsoldiers.

Differing from Charles in his rejection of the need for mutants to assimilate into regular society (befitting the 1960s setting and the Civil Rights overtones, Erik is very much Malcolm X to Charles's Martin Luther King), the pair nevertheless team up to bring down former Nazi and, as it turns out, mutant supremacist Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon).

He's using the pretext of the Cold War, and especially the Cuban Missile Crisis, to bring about a nuclear strike that, thanks to the radiation fall-out, will shift the balance of power in favour of the mutants.

Incorporating real world events into a superhero film, could have been problematic, but it's used sparingly and playfully enough so as not to draw too much attention to itself.

It also simultaneously capitalises on our general knowledge and familiarity with these landmark events to provide useful jumping-off points for the narrative. Indeed, the film's what-if scenario makes more dramatic sense than similarly megalomaniacal plots hatched by countless other Bond-style movie villains; here, at least, bringing the world to the bring of nuclear destruction will actually benefit the bad guy.

Vaughn also has fun with the 1960s backdrop in terms of the style and look of the film; from the chic, Mad Men-esque tailoring (a connection enhanced by the presence of January Jones as villainous telepath Emma Frost), to the shameless shots of lingerie-clad women and the abundance of old-school technology, the retro feel and period details help distinguish X-Men: First Class visually from every other superhero film out there.

There are flaws, though. The younger cast – including Jennifer Lawrence (Winter's Bone) as Raven/Mystique – don't inhabit their roles as comfortably as Fassbender and McAvoy do theirs. As with all the X-Men films, there's also a lot of furrowed-brow acting and Abracadabra hand gesturing when the big set pieces begin and the actors have to show us their characters unleashing their powers. But these are relatively minor gripes.

In what is shaping up to be a mediocre summer of sequels, X-Men: First Class at least strives to live up to the promise of its title.