With Deadpool & Wolverine looming, I thought I would jump back in time to look at some of the previous X-Men movies, a mixed bag if there ever was one. When they’re good, they are excellent. When they are bad, they are just trash. But in 2011, five years after basically ruining everything with X-Men: The Last Stand, Fox decided to try something a little different: prequels! Why not? Lucas made money on it. Through some brilliant casting and story-weaving, they started off with a bang:
In a previous post on X-Men ‘ 97 (which you read, right?), I posited that the X-Men are at their best when focusing on the Charles/Magneto dynamic. It’s funny because it wasn’t something that was a big deal to me when I first started reading X-Men comics back in the 80’s because Magneto had sort of turned to the side of the righteous. Being a new reader, I didn’t really understand how controversial that was, and then by the time I stopped reading the books, Magneto was mentoring the New Mutants (originally called the X-Babies, so not a book I spent a lot of time or money on), and Charles had been beaten in an alley by some mutant-haters and was convalescing in space, similar to the show, so he wasn’t really being highlighted in the book. But looking back now, even when the characters were not around, the dynamic was always an underlying theme: Magneto thought mutants were superior and should rule the world, while Charles thought that mutants and humans should all live in harmony.
Quick Sidebar of Some of My Favorite X-Titles for your Reading Pleasure (if you click on the tiles, I get a kickback. Feed me!):
X-Men Days of Future Past - The one that changed the whole franchise
X-Men: X-Men Fall of Mutants - A great crossover from my youth
X-Men: Dark Phoenix Saga - You all remember this one, right?
First Class captures the origins of the characters and the team itself expertly, even while not involving some of the mainstays in X-Men lore, like Jean Grey and Cyclops. It does add one crucial element that ups the drama, however: the character of Raven, who eventually will come to be known as Mystique, played by Rebecca Romaijn in the original X-Men trilogy (and here for a few seconds, in an all-time great cameo) and Jennifer Lawrence in the more recent incarnation. We meet young Raven as she is breaking into Charles’ childhood estate. She shape-shifts into Charles’ mother to try and placate him, but Young Chuck is not so easily fooled. When she offers to make him a cup of hot chocolate, we get a funny glimpse into his formative years as he immediately is suspicious of this, and he uses his telepathic powers to infiltrate her mind, letting the intruder know that his mother had never once offered such a thing, unless you count asking the maid to do it. Raven, caught red-handed but also intrigued by this voice in her head, reveals her true, blue form, and Charles is actually delighted at finding another person who is “different.” He tells her to take wherever she wants and opens his home, stating that she will never have to steal again, and a bond is immediately forged. Even as a little kid, Charles was welcoming.
Magneto, real name Erik Lehnsherr, had it a little different, to say the least. The very first scene in First Class is a retelling of his introduction from the first X-Men movie. He is in a concentration camp in Poland in 1944, and Nazi soldiers separate him from his parents. In his anguish, young Erik reaches out for them and uses his untapped mastery of magnetism to bend the iron gate that is between him and his parents. Unlike in the first X-Men movie, we see that someone has taken notice. This someone was Klaus Schmidt, who would later adopt the alias of noted X-men nemesis Sebastian Shaw, and played by Kevin Bacon. In one of my favorite scenes in all of X-Men moviedom, Schmidt tries to get Erik to use his power to move a coin mentally. When he is unable to do it, Schmidt brings in a little incentive; he has two soldiers bring in Erik’s mother, and he holds her at gunpoint. He then gives Erik three seconds to move the coin. When he again cannot do it, Schmidt pulls the trigger and shoots Erik’s mother dead. In a rage, Erik then unleashes his full power. He crushes the metal helmets of the two Nazi soldiers and destroys Schmidt’s lab. Despite this, Schmidt is quite pleased. He knows rage can unlock Erik’s powers, and for the first time, he refers to his mutation as a “gift.” He slips the coin in Erik’s hand and promises him that they are going to have “a lot of fun.”
That probably didn’t happen, though, as we then jump ahead to a grown up Erik (Michael Fassbender) in the early 60’s. He still has his coin and is scouring the globe, looking for the man who murdered his mother. Through this quest, we get glimpses into his psyche, and how being a Holocaust survivor affected him. Conversely, Charles' posh upbringing has allowed him to forge a much different life for himself. We see him receive his doctorate from Oxford, with his research in human evolution, particularly mutation (or as he calls it when he is talking to a beautiful, young woman with different colored eyes, “a very groovy mutation.”) Raven is still by his side, although as a humble waitress who in public always takes the form of a pretty young blonde. So, it’s pretty obvious why the Holocaust survivor and the Oxford student with the leggy blonde at his side would develop different philosophies on life and mutant equality. We also get a glimpse into Raven's personality, however, when she asks Charles if he would date her if she was permanently blue. Charles, despite all his good intentions, skirts around the issue by saying that she is his oldest friend so cannot look at her that way. Still she seems a little blue about being blue.
Xavier is eventually recruited by Moira MacTaggert of the CIA, who had encountered Shaw (who uses his energy absorption powers to keep himself young, which is a pretty groovy mutation in its own right) and some of his mutant cohorts trying to manipulate an army Colonel. After seeing them use their powers, she felt that she needed some insight in human mutation, and looked up an expert. This leads to Charles and Erik crossing paths for the first time. Charles saves Erik from nearly killing himself trying to use his powers to raise Shaw’s submarine from under the water. He communicates telepathically with him, convincing him to let the sub go or it will drag him down and drown him. When they reach the surface, Erik, like Raven, is amazed that someone else has extraordinary abilities, and Erik claims, “I thought I was alone.” It was a nice moment, and the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Sort of.
Erik and Charles, with Raven in tow, are brought to a secret CIA facility where they are introduced to Hank McCoy, a mutant himself, who is basically really smart but can also use his large feet to grab onto things and hang like a monkey. Being mutants that prefer to hide their true appearance, Hank and Raven immediately form a bond. Meanwhile, Charles and Erik use Cerebro, a super-computer that Hank designed to augment Charles’ abilities to find and recruit other mutants to aid them in their fight against Shaw and his bad guy mutants (One of them being the transporting Azazel, who will be appearing in Deadpool & Wolverine.) Even in this early stage of their crusade, Erik is suspicious. His experiences with the Nazis rounding up Jews has colored his outlook, and he feels that helping the CIA discover mutants is only the beginning, with the next step being experimentation and eventually genocide. It’s hard to argue with his perspective, to be honest.
They eventually unravel Shaw’s plot to start World War III and use a nuclear submarine to basically make more mutants, which is a fun call-ahead/back to Erik’s goal from the first X-Men movie. Charles trains all of his new recruits to properly use their powers at his mansion in upstate New York. It’s a fun sequence that shows how the team began, but there we also see the cracks beginning to form. Hank has the idea of using Raven’s “shape-shifting” blood to develop a serum that will revert the two of them to “normal” looking humans, but Erik needles Raven that she is already beautiful, and superior, so why would she want to lower herself to look like a human? Eventually, she refuses his serum, and when he uses it on himself, he is transformed into the furball Beast that readers of the comics are familiar with.
When they realize what Shaw is up to, they get ready to head after him. Before they depart, however, we have a final debate between Charles and Erik. They agree that after the battle with Shaw’s forces, the existence of mutants will be revealed to the world. However, Charles believes that if they stop Shaw, people will see that they’re the good guys. Erik responds that he does not plan to stop Shaw, but to kill him. Charles thinks that they need to be the better men, and Erik suggests that they already are. It is, once again, the debate at the very core of the X-Men.
Since this is the early 60’s, the movie adds a cool twist that Shaw’s machinations basically caused the Cuban Missile Crisis, with mutants being responsible for the U.S. and Russian ships not firing on each other. Mutants being involved in history-making moments became a theme in the first couple editions of the prequel series, but something they dropped after that. Perhaps coincidentally, the quality of the movies dropped as well.
The battle off the coast of Cuba ensues, and it is mutant versus mutant. Meanwhile, while stopping Shaw from unleashing his nuclear device, Erik fulfills his promise and kills Shaw by moving the very same Nazi coin Shaw gave him at the beginning of the movie through his skull. Just before he does, however, Shaw did spew some of his pro-mutant philosophy at Erik, which Erik told him that he agreed with. Erik also let him know that Shaw made him the weapon he was, but when you kill a guy’s mom in front of him, there’s just no going back.
However, that is not the end of the conflict. Erik has fully gone to the dark side, and implores his fellow mutants to stop fighting, because the real enemy is on the Russian and U.S. warships just off the coast that have just witnessed a lot of mutant powers being used. He even goes so far as to refer to them as “Neanderthal.”
In a crazy moment of harmony between the two countries, both U.S. and Russian governments decide to open fire and exterminate the whole bunch of mutants right there. Erik, however, having unlocked his true potential, uses his mastery over metal to halt the missiles in mid-air, and turn them back on the ships. Charles begs him to stop, reasoning that there are innocent men on the ships, and that they are just following orders. In another allusion to his time in the concentration camps, Erik responds that he has been at the mercy of men just following orders before, and he won’t let it happen again. Charles tries to physically intervene, during the struggle, Moira opens fire on Erik, who deflects the bullets, deflecting one of them into Charles’ spine. As Erik goes to his friend’s aid, he drops his control of the missiles and they fall harmlessly into the water. Erik blames humans for tearing them apart, while Charles tells Erik that he is the one at fault.
Erik implores all the mutants present to join him in his new quest: mutant supremacy. Shaw’s team goes immediately, and they are joined by Raven. As much as she loved Charles since childhood, she did not want to be part of a society that would never accept her natural blue form. She leaves with Erik, and her and Charles' bond is severed.
As I said earlier, because this is a prequel, and the studio could not involve Jean Grey and Cyclops, and Wolverine (except for a brief and hilarious cameo), they were a bit hand-cuffed, but the movie does an amazing job with the characters they did have, which are arguably the most essential characters of the entire franchise, anyway. Charles and Erik, two friends with differing philosophies who could never convince the other of their way was the right way. Charles simply wanted to teach mutants to control their gifts and be accepted into society. Erik, as Magneto, wanted mutants to take their rightful place in the evolutionary chain, just like homo sapiens had done before. But there was the layer underneath the differing philosophies, as well. As we will see in the next movie, Charles is hurt more than anything by the loss of Raven.
There is a lot more to this movie that I didn’t cover, but that seems like a good segue so I’ll leave the rest for next time, when I’ll go on and on about my favorite X-movie, and one of my favorite comic book movies of all time, X-Men: Days of Future Past.
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Great read here - would love to explore more (on a podcast perhaps? if only that were possible!). I especially like the style of this movie! Not lost on me, Emma Frost (January Jones) from Mad Men is amazing in the Hellfire Club scene - probably my favorite scene of the movie. That or Magneto in the submarine! Great casting all around! "McAvoy or Stewart? These timelines are confusing!"