X-Men: First Class

The fifth feature film to bring Marvel's popular mutants to the big screen, X-Men: First Class is a good superhero movie, but not a great one, failing to reach the ensemble-driven heights of X2: X-Men United while avoiding the Brett Ratner-helmed lows of X-Men: The Last Stand. Directed by Matthew Vaughn (who was initially attached to the latter), this outing throws decades of comic-book continuity out the window and presents the origins of the team in a tale largely set during the Cuban Missile Crisis. An idealistic telepath, Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) joins forces with metal-controlling Holocaust survivor Erik Lensherr (Michael Fassbender) and others to prevent the devious Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) and his Hellfire Club from starting World War III. While McAvoy and Fassbender are excellent in their highly charismatic roles, the rest of the film doesn't operate on the same level. Bacon is clearly having fun, but he comes across as entirely non-threatening, while Mad Men's January Jones, as fellow villain Emma Frost, is utterly ineffective, despite the familiar era. First Class also suffers from lame peripheral characters, and is missing lively action sequences, which Vaughn used so entertainingly in Kick-Ass. The leads make the movie worth watching, but as Fassbender effectively emotes while his character moves a massive radar dish with his powers, he could just as well be trying to elevate the whole production, a feat that not even he can accomplish.