X-Men: First Class opens in a concentration camp. The boy who will one day become Magneto is separated from his parents by Nazis, which causes his mutant powers to unlock. Stricken with grief, he discovers he can bend metal with his mind. And you’re right: we have seen this exact scene before.
Around the same time, young Charles Xavier has learned he can read minds. He demonstrates the ability when he discovers a young and homeless Mystique rummaging in his kitchen. I don’t remember Professor X ever recognizing the shapeshifter in the films set after this one, but just go with it. You’ll have bigger challenges with this film, believe me.
Fast forward a few years later and an adult Magneto (Michael Fassbender) is searching for Dr. Schmidt (Kevin Bacon), who cruelly studied his powers of magnetism and murdered his mother. We learn that adult Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and adult Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) have been hiding their mutant powers ever since they met. Mystique is forced to appear in her human form whenever they’re in public; she thinks men are unlikely to find her attractive in her natural blue form (um… sure).
Schmidt has escaped to America under the guise of Sebastian Shaw. During a stakeout, CIA agent Moira MacTaggert (Rose Byrne) learns Shaw is a mutant who plans to incite nuclear war. See, mutants were born of radiation so they will survive the nuclear winter (never mind the blasts). Most humans, on the other hand, will not. When you’ve got mutants as dangerous as Shaw, you can see why the government wants to track them all, but I digress. Again, there will be harder pills to swallow.
Charles and Mystique are recruited by the CIA to go after Shaw. Charles convinces Magneto to join him. They’re going to need a team, of course, so they scrape the absolute bottom of the barrel. See, for much of the original run of Uncanny X-Men, there was a problem: it was kind of a mediocre comic. It wasn’t until Giant-Size X-Men when the team got interesting. Which begs the question: Why bother making a film about the X-Men team no one, including Marvel itself, gave a shit about?
Look, all superhero movies are at least kind of goofy, but First Class takes the cake. Even the recognizable X-men are portrayed by younger actors with roughly half the gravitas of the old ones. Most of their powers are dull and useless. Worse, Magneto seems to exist in his own movie most of the time, a more serious movie, a darker movie, and a better movie. I would have much rather seen Magneto: Origins than this uneven mess.
Tonal shifts aside, it’s a well made movie made by an accomplished director whose first three movies I admired tremendously. It just isn’t exciting subject matter, unfortunately, and I hope he gets a chance to return to the less-Hollywood fare where he originally made a name.
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