X-Men First Class

I watched this movie with a couple of friends on Friday. Now, unless you were born and bred in a subterranean cave in Middle-Of-Nowhere, Antartica, with absolutely no TV reception or access to a comic book store, you probably know who the X-Men are. The X-Men are mutants and in case you didn't know what mutants are, I'll fill you in. Mutants are an evolved form of humanity that have special powers ranging from useful things such as controlling the weather or healing from any injury, to completely useless, like Jubilee's entire existence. Most of them experience a world filled with the same level of bigotry as 1950s Alabama, so many mutants feel the need to join up with teams, such as the X-Men, or their rivals such as The Brotherhood Of Mutants. Anyways, the film itself is a prequel to the previous X-Men movies, way back when Magneto was still an X-Men and occasional chess buddy of ol' Xavier.

Anyways, the movie begins in 1944, at a concentration camp, where Dr Schmidt witnesses a boy bending a metal gate (Holy shit! I can't even bend a metal spoon, let alone a freakin gate) in the process of being separated from his parents. Dr Schmidt, your average, run-of-the-mill psychopathic and totally insane Nazi scientist, decides to perform an experiment on said boy, Erik Lensherr. He instructs Erik to move a coin with the power of his mind. Now, if you were a boy in a Nazi camp and some crazy scientist asks you to move a coin with nothing but your mind, it becomes totally acceptable to fail. Dr Schmidt didn't seem to think so. In a tone one uses to comment on the weather, Dr Schmidt calmly tells Erik he will shoot his mother if he fails to move the coin.

Pictured: Douchebag

Again, Erik fails. The heartless bastard, Dr Schmidt, promptly shoots his mom. Now, there is only so much a boy can take. Killing his mother sends Erik into a berserker rage. He unleashes his power together with an eerie scream that welled up straight from the bottom of his murderous heart. He manages to kill two guards in the process. Dr Schmidt, who should be furious, is instead delighted and vows to help Erik master his powers, going all Master Yoda on him (if Yoda brutally murdered Luke's father just because Luke couldn't use the damn Force on his first try). At around the same time, Charles Xavier meets a shape-shifting girl, Raven, in his house. Delighted to find out that there are others who are different, just like him, and presumably because he never had a girlfriend before, he decides to keep her around.

In Switzerland,in the movie's present day of 1962, Erik Lensherr, now fully trained and 100% badass, is on a mission to hunt down Dr Schmidt, his mentor/tormentor. He asks a banker to trace a bar of Nazi gold, and when the banker refuses, he threatened to. . . pull out his fillings using his powers of magnetism. Now, when the banker clutches his face and starts moaning, I thought this was about to happen.

Which would be totally wicked

But instead he opts for the easier way out, and. . . pulls out the tooth filling with his powers of magnetism. Is this some bizarre message to the subconscious of the audience, that should you fail to maintain good oral hygiene, a magnetism-wielding mutant will hunt your fillings down like the scum you are? Only God knows. Anyways, Erik is able to get a lead. And, he proceeds to freaking murder 3 ex-Nazis so violently that somewhere in his grave, Hitler's arm just shot up for a high five, right after he manages to get a lock on Dr Schmidt, or as he is more commonly known, Sebastian Shaw, which is a hell of a lot easier to pronounce then Schmidt (Thank God!)

In the meanwhile, Xavier or just ol' Charles has graduated from Oxford and is currently publishing a thesis on mutation or as Raven puts it, her sleeping aid. Simultaneously in Las Vegas, Nevada, CIA agent Moira Mactaggert follows U.S Army Colonel Hendry into the Hellfire Club, where she sees Sebastian Shaw, Emma Frost, and Azazel. After Shaw threatens Hendry, Azazel disappears with the officer; moments later Henry is in the War Room, advocating that the U.S. install nuclear missiles in Turkey. Shaw later kills Hendry, demonstrating his energy-absorbing mutant power and revealing he is Schmidt, de-aged.

Just because the CIA is unable to wrap its simplistic minds around simple terms like teleportation and mutations, Mactaggert is then sent to find someone who does. Luckily for them, Xavier is available, though a wee bit drunk because he's a, well, college student and superpowered mutant or not, Charles Xavier is still susceptible to the effects of alchohol.

Messing with mutants since 1847

Anyways, being telepathic and all, he manages to glean all the information he needs from right out of Mactaggert's mind, and presuming that Shaw would totally mess with his professor vibe, agrees to track down Shaw using his rad skills. Xavier manage to track him down just as he is escaping from battle with Erik. Erik, who is hellbent on revenge, won't let something as puny as drowning, stop him from crushing Shaw's escaping sub. Even though he is rapidly sinking into the depths of the ocean(presumably due to the weight of his enormous balls), he refuses to let go of Shaw's sub. At which point Xavier dives into the waters to prevent Erik from killing himself trying to stop the sub. In the ensuing fracas, Shaw makes a hasty getaway.

Xavier and Erik are then brought to Division X of the CIA and they meet Hank McCoy, a prehensile-footed mutant with enhanced intelligence, which in layman terms, means he has beast-like limbs to go along with his multiple P.H.D's in biochemistry and genetics. Xavier then uses a mutant locating device,Cerebro to recruit mutants to fight Shaw (Holy shit ?! A mutant army?). Refusing help from the CIA, Xavier and Erik travel the world, recruiting mutants along the way.. Among them are the mutants we would later know as Havok, Angel, Banshee and Darwin. The dynamic duo also tries to recruit Wolverine, but Wolverine, who has simply run out of fucks to give, just doesn't, well. . . give a fuck, at which point, and I kid you not, the audience in my cinema started to cheer. Now, keep in mind that this is only a 10 second cameo, and suddenly this makes a lot of sense

Meanwhile, Charles and Erik leave with the CIA to find and capture Shaw, who is supposed to be meeting with a Soviet general. The young mutants bond, and show each other their various powers, making it one of, if not the coolest, ice-breaking party I've ever seen. Frost meets with the Soviet general in Shaw's place, and Charles and Erik capture her, in what appears to be a sick parody of a bondage routine, with just spiked heels and a leather whip short to truly make it a Rihanna music video. They also discovering Shaw's true plan in the process; he intends to use World War 3 to create a nuclear holocaust, which he believes mutants will thrive in, and eventually rise above the humans.

Meanwhile, Azazel, Shaw, and Riptide attack Division X, killing everyone except the young mutants, offering them the chance to join them in their crusade. Now, before you start making fun of their names, possibly imagining them with really tiny wangs and therefore overcompensating with names like Riptide and Azazel, keep in mind, they have really awesome powers. While Riptide may not be strong enough to rip a tide in two (unlike his namesake), he can generate tornados. Azazel, on the other hand, can teleport. Did I say teleport? Subject of at least one wet dream of every pale, morbidly obese, sci-fi geek in the world. And Azazel can do it, in rapid succession. Anyways, insecure bitch she is, Angel betrays our group of young mutants and crosses over to the other side, and when Darwin tries to rescue her, Shaw disintegrates him.

Disintegration is not a pretty mental image. Compensation is provided

With the facility destroyed, Xavier takes the mutants to train at his family mansion, which is huge. Anyways, the mutants start honing their skills under the watchful eye of Charles and Erik, and slowly but surely, start gaining some measure of control over their considerable powers. Meanwhile, Hank McCoy, with no output for his considerable intellect, starts pimping their ride and making cool uniforms. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK institutes a blockade to stop a Soviet freighter from moving nuclear missiles to Cuba. Shaw, wearing a helmet that foils Xaviers telepathy, tags along with the Soviet fleet to ensure the missiles arrive, trying to trigger World War 3 and mutant ascendancy. Really, this guy has issues.

On the day of the battle, Hank pilots the X-Men to the front lines in their newly pimped ride, the Blackbird, and they proceed to hunt down Shaw using their superpowers. In the ensuing fight, Erik pawns Shaw, and then, as a final fuck you , takes off his helmet as well. Yes, that wicked helmet he would later wear in the future was stolen. Unfortunately, he didn't steal Shaw's impeccable fashion taste as well.

Is it just me? Or does he look like an intergalactic pimp?

No doubt having a blast watching one of the most entertaining fights of all time going down since Muhammad Ali beat up Sonny Liston, the commanders of the ships, in what had to be a major buzzkill, were then ordered to fire all nuclear missiles currently in their possession because the mutants, with their awesome powers, were deemed by the powers-that-be to be a threat to humanity. Now, a major component in most missiles would be some type of metal, and in one of the stupidest decisions ever made since Napoleon decided to invade Russia, the ships rain a hail of missiles on the master of magnetism. This is when shit really hits the fan. Erik, controlling enough missiles to wipe out a small country, decides to blast the offending ships to kingdom come because, dammit, he's the goddamn master of magnetism. In a struggle, Xavier keeps Erik from destroying the fleets with the missiles, but when Moira fires at Erik, a deflected bullet hits Xavier in the spine. Erik, remorseful, leaves with Mystique, Angel, Riptide and Azazel.

A wheelchair-bound Xavier and the mutants return to the mansion, where he intends to open a school. And thus the legend of the X-Men starts.

Anyway, I kinda liked the film because, first off, the action scenes were awesome. I mean, I'll never look at teleportation quite the same way again, after the Azazel almost single-handedly disposes off the guards at the CIA facility. Erik was pretty cool too, the way he lifted a freaking submarine out of the ocean onto the shore. The plot was pretty refreshing too, instead of the old X-Men vs Magneto, the film takes a look at the roots of what would be one of the most epic rivalry in history since Superman and Lex Luthor. I rate this film a four on a scale of five.