X-Men: First Class

MOVIE REVIEW

Restarting the ‘X-Men’ franchise: McAvoy and Fassbender propel prequel

June 02, 2011|By Ty Burr, Globe Staff

James McAvoy (left) and Michael Fassbender portray the young Xavier and… (Photos by MURRAY CLOSE/20TH…)

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X-MEN: First Class Directed by: Matthew Vaughn

Written by: Vaughn, Ashley Edward Miller, Zack Stentz, Jane Goldman, Sheldon Turner, Bryan Singer

Starring: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Kevin Bacon, Jennifer Lawrence, Rose Byrne, January Jones

At: Boston Common, Fenway, suburbs

Running time: 131 minutes

Rated: PG-13 (intense sequences of action and violence, some sexual content including brief [blue mutant] nudity, and language)

The “X-Men’’ franchise has been the silver standard of the modern multiplex comic book era. Not the “Dark Knight’’/“Iron Man’’/“Incredibles’’ pinnacle, but up there with the first few “Spider-Man’’ movies and arguably more of a class act, with its double team of Great British Thespians (Patrick Stewart as the benevolent telepath Professor Charles Xavier, Ian McKellan as the eeevil Magneto) and secondary characters that are themselves state-of-the-art special effects. That misunderstood-freaks theme can carry as much allegorical weight as you want to pile on to it, too. When a character in the new origins story, “X-Men: First Class,’’ is outed as a mutant, he mumbles with some embarrassment, “You didn’t ask, I didn’t tell.’’

“First Class’’ also extends the alienated-outsider metaphor to African-Americans (Edi Gathegi as the adaptive Darwin), Jews (the young Magneto barely makes it out of the concentration camps), and teenagers (half the cast, more or less). Everybody except women, but, hey, it’s 1962, and you can’t take the little ladies seriously unless they’re working as strippers (Zoe Kravitz as the airborne Angel), parading in their blue scaly glory (Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique) or peeling down to their skivvies and projecting themselves into a Russian general’s lap. That’s Frost and she’s played by January Jones of “Mad Men.’’ If they’re not selling martinis at the concession stand, they probably should.

The director is Matthew Vaughn (“Layer Cake,’’ “Kick-Ass’’), which explains the bad-lad double standard when it comes to the female characters. If you can get past that (and millions of fan-boys won’t have much of a problem), “X-Men: First Class’’ is perfectly fine summer folderol, epic enough on its own terms if not quite big enough to expand beyond its genre and matter to people who find it difficult to care about characters who spit gobs of flaming phlegm. I realize there are fewer and fewer of us, but we’re a hardy band and stubborn.

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