X-Men First Class
Synopsis: In the early 1960s, during the height of the Cold War, a mutant named Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) meets a fellow mutant named Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender). Despite their vastly different backgrounds -- Charles grew up with a wealthy family, while Erik lost his parents at Auschwitz -- the two become close friends. As the world teeters on the brink of a nuclear war, Charles and Erik with other mutants join forces to save humanity. However, a situation soon tears the friends apart.
Movie review: "X-Men First Class" in my opinion is one of the best prequel/reboot of any franchise. After the god awful three entries in the X-Men Universe, Matthew Vaughn has delivered an action packed, entertaining movie with great performances by James Macavoy and Micheel Fassbender as the two leads. This film takes place in the early 1960's and it follows 2 mutants named Charles Xavier and Eric Lensherr before they were Professor X and Magneto. They are two young men trying to discover their powers for the first time and later become best friends working together with other mutants to stop Sabastian Stan (Kevin Bacon) from starting World War 3. So they must join forces to save humanity and the world. What makes "X-Men First Class" a return to the original form of X-Men movies is the all-star cast. James Macavoy and Michael Fassbender have great chemistry with each other and you witness this as their friendship develops on screen in emotional scenes throughout the film. Their friendship was the highlight of this movie. Jennifer Lawrence plays Raven Aka Mystique. Even though I am a huge Jennifer Lawrence fan, I just didn't believe her as Mystique. Kevin Bacon plays the villain Sabastian Shaw who is one of the most intimidating villains in the X-Men universe and he wasn't just a typical clichéd villain and Bacon does a fantastic job portraying this character. The action sequences in this film are action packed especially the fight between Beast (Nicholas Hoult) and Azazel (Jason Flemyng). It was well choreographed and the visual effects were amazing. Matthew Vaughn is great at combining practical and visual effects making the scene real and believable to the audience. The only issues that I have with this movie are that some of the young characters were not fully developed and January Jones as Emma Frost was one of the worst characters in this film – it felt as if she was phoning her performance in and she was just so annoying in every scene. "X-Men First Class" is one of the best comic book prequels of all time and Matthew Vaughn has brought back the X-Men franchise after the disaster of "X-Men the Last Stand" killed it for 5 years. Vaughn crafted a film that was action packed and entertaining. I am giving "X-Men First Class" a 4 out of 5 stars.
Director: Matthew Vaughn
Cast: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Kevin Bacon, Rose Byrne, Oliver Platt, Jason Flemyng, Zoe Fravitz, January Jones, Nicholas Hoult, Caleb Landry Jones, and Lucas Till
Runtime: 132 minutes