Directed by: Matthew Vaughn

Starring: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Kevin Bacon, Jennifer Lawrence

Yesterday afternoon, before I went to see, “Battle of the Bands” at SPAC, I went to the mall to check out “X-Men: First Class” and do a little fun shopping after. I bought a few more books of the Game of Thrones “Song of Ice and Fire” series: “Clash of Kings” and “Storm of Swords”. Looking forward to reading the next book, “Clash of Kings” because I’m almost done reading the first one, “Game of Thrones”. I also picked up a few music CD’s from Best Buy. I picked up, Eddie Vedder’s new album, “Ukulele Songs” and Black Label Society’s new album, “The Song Remains Not the Same”.

On with my review….
Plot/synopsis: This is a prequel to Bryan Singer’s first “X-Men” movie. The story is the beginning of Magneto and Professor X. It started with their childhood to being grown men. The story tells how Magneto and Professor X became best friends, discovering their powers and having fun with it. They learn that other mutants have similar powers but each mutant can do different things. Together, Magneto and Professor X get together with the other young mutants to train each other their powers on how to use them better. The film features a lot of mutants from the X-Men comics such as Mystique, the White Queen, Beast, and Riptide. Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) knew Magneto since his childhood and Sebastian was the first one to discover Magneto’s powers. Sebastian starts his own group called, the Hellfire Club, because he was obsessed with taking over the world. President Kennedy announces that a Russian freighter is moving nuclear missiles to Cuba, so Professor X’s mutant team tries to stop that from happening to save the world.

That’s all I’ll go with the plot. I know there has been too many superhero films these days. They’ve been coming out like crazy. Most new superhero movies aren’t that great. In “X-Men: First Class”, I thought the writing was intelligently done, it was smart writing. Who ever wrote the script, is obviously a huge X-Men fan and he knows his shit with the characters, and the story. The screenwriter took it very seriously and I can tell. The writing was insightful, detailed and smart.

The acting of the cast was very well done. Could there be a few Oscar nominations with the acting in this movie? Maybe Kevin Bacon will get nominated for Sebastian Shaw, because I was impressed with him the most. Kevin Bacon played a lot of villain characters in movies such as “The River Wild”, “Hollow Man”, “Sleepers”, etc. I thought this was Kevin’s best villain role. Kevin did an excellent job playing a villain you really want to hate. He was a real psycho in this movie. I was also very impressed with James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender, they teamed up well together. I also loved Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique, she was perfect for the character.

The movie is very action packed. The action scenes were pretty epic, a thrill ride. I thought the special effects and sound were beautiful. The musical score was amazing as well. Yes, the film had the whole package. It was a perfect superhero film. I thought this was the best new superhero film since “The Dark Knight”. Seriously, I had a fucking blast watching, “X-Men: First Class”. I was never bored and didn’t fall asleep once. This film made you wonder what it would be like if Mutants actually existed for real in this world.

Yes, Hugh Jackman makes a cameo in this film. No cameo from Patrick Stewart or Ian McKellen though which is the only disappointing thing about this film. I’m sure there’s going to be a sequel where Professor X and Magneto face off each other.

Do yourself a favor and check this movie out this weekend! I FUCKING LOVED IT! I would go see it again!

Score for “X-Men: First Class – **** (4 stars as in “excellent”)

Kev