X-Men: First Class (2011)

Directed by Matthew Vaughn. Starring James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Kevin Bacon, Rose Byrne, Lucas Till, Caleb Landry Jones, January Jones, Oliver Platt, Jason Flemyng, Matt Craven, Edi Gathegi, Zoë Kravitz, Rade Šerbedžija. [PG-13]

Rather than carrying on from the mess left by X-Men: The Last Stand, the franchise “returns to its roots” with this origin story that shows how Charles Xavier/Professor X (McAvoy) and Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto (Fassbender) first became friends and allies in the 1960s, recruiting other mutants to join their efforts to defeat an ex-Nazi scientist (Bacon) who also has mutant powers and is pushing the world powers to the brink of nuclear war. Entertaining series entry has a lot of story to tell, with several ingenious scenes and sub-plots that could have been the basis of their own movie (e.g., Fassbender hunting Nazis in Argentina); has a lot of fun exploring the roots of the well-known characters’ personalities and relationships, and using its setting as more than mere backdrop for all the special effects. Suffers from a shaky final act that tries to integrate these fictional events with the real events of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and an underwhelming lineup of villains—including a laughably wooden Jones as Emma Frost—but otherwise first-rate escapism with a grounded message and strong production values. A cameo from Hugh Jackman gets maybe the biggest laugh of the entire X-Men series.

75/100