I Watched This: X-Men First Class

Go ahead and argue that X2 is the best comic book movie. It's quality fanboy wish-fulfillment. The cast is stacked with hot women, there are about a half-dozen holy-shit sequences (the Nightcrawler White House invasion, Magneto pulling metal from the security guard's pores, etc.), and a fully-realized Wolverine, angsty and don't-fuck-with irritable, for a protagonist. X2's director Bryan Singer has a screenwriting credit on X-Men: First Class so we get a lot of the same formula: Rose Byrne as Moira McTaggart running around in her underwear for her first 10 minutes onscreen while January Jones spends the whole movie in White Queen lingerie; twice as many holy-shit sequences including Erik Lensherr, from the hull of the Blackbird, lifting up an entire nuclear sub; and Magneto himself, brooding, a Euro-Wolverine who’s coming-of-age.

Erik (Michael Fassbinder), like Logan, was the subject of some scientific poking and prodding. In his case, instead of some shadowy US agency, its Nazis who did the cutting, in particular a man named Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon). "Blond hair, blue eyes," Shaw scoffs as he dismisses the Reich's tastes. For him, it's all about mutants and their powers and culling away unpowered human beings. After watching a ten-year-old Erik pull apart a concentration camp gate, Shaw tries to induce the young boy into using his powers. "Move this coin," Shaw orders as he points a gun at Erik's mother. Erik doesn't yet know how, so, by the count of three, his mom gets it at point blank. Post-WWII, Erik's all grows up, knows enough that he can wrap dudes in barbed wire and shoot hunting knives into torsos, and he's on Shaw's trail. Eventually, his search takes him to the US where he crosses paths with a CIA-employed and still-ambulatory Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) who's also after Shaw, though for more big-picture reasons.

It's easy to cheer for Erik and his revenge since in movies, and First Class knows all this, Nazis and their sympathizers are not just jerks, they're smug jerks. At a Parisian bank, in an office of antique wooden globes and silver picture frames, Erik barters his bar of Nazi-gold. His people's melted jewelry, he explains in perfect French, before forcing open the bank manager's mouth. Metal fillings. Even after getting the info on Shaw, Erik still yanks from one of the dude's molars and stares at the piece of metal with the calm wonder of a kid looking at a cricket’s yanked-off legs. He's as driven as Wolverine, but he's shinier. No everyman swag, 5 o'clock shadow, or showy biceps (Jackman's Logan does get an awesome one-line cameo, FYI). Erik is wiry, not bulky, and he looks good in turtlenecks. He's always clean-shaven and hair-gelled. In Wolverine's case, there's something pure and no-nonsense about his powers. He cuts and punches, people bleed. Erik's powers feel more sinister. He waves his hands and invisible things happen. A small piece of metal, for instance, floats through organs or helmets crush their wearers’ heads. You wouldn't leave your girlfriend with Wolverine because dude is a he-man, but you wouldn't leave your girl with Erik because dude's a casanova who'd bend first her mind, then her over.

In a lot of ways then, Magneto is an even more seductive protagonist. He was there when his mother dies, and that's always a soft touch (i.e. Bruce Wayne), so there's something extra in his anger. Tears flow, for instance, when Xavier elicits one of Erik's memories -- lighting a menorah -- of his mother. However, there's a bit too much distraction in First Class and Erik gets a little lost, at times, in the crowd. There's no time to really develop a romance for him in the same way that Wolverine pined for Jean. There is something between Erik and Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), Charles Xavier's oldest childhood friend. Charles never tries to get it in, partly because her blue scaly form doesn't do it for him. His tastes still run pretty human. Erik, on the other hand, tells her, as she lies nude under his bedsheets, that he only wants her in default-blue. Mystique does mix-it-up with Hank McCoy and that's just one romantic entanglement too many. Erik is a seducer, but we don't get to see him seduce enough.

First Class suffers from a bit of team-itis. There's a bit too many characters. There are good snapshots of some of the periphery mutants. In one scene, the teenaged X-Men recruits sit around, drink and show-off their powers. Hank McCoy hangs upside-down from a chandelier and Alex Summers cuts a brass statue in half. There are also less-satisfying and campy montages with these characters training for combat (Banshee dropped from a second-floor window in a failed attempt to fly, Beast in a foot-race with Xavier, etc.). When Banshee does fly and Beast does mix it up, I did get that giddiness that only a comic fan can get. Still, though, this should have been more Magneto's show. I mean, dude kills Nazis and fucks blue chicks. My steez.