Before mutants had revealed themselves to the world, and before Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr took the names Professor X and Magneto, they were two young men discovering their powers for the first time. Not archenemies, they were instead at first the closest of friends, working together with other Mutants (some familiar, some new), to prevent nuclear Armageddon. In the process, a grave rift between them opened, which began the eternal war between Magneto's Brotherhood and Professor X's X-Men.

I went into X-Men First Class with very low expectations as the series seems to have fizzled quite a bit since the second film easily the best of the series. And while I am not sure if it is because I went in with such low expectations or because the film is just such a vast improvement over the last two installments I found myself really enjoying the film. Back stories and prequels can be tough to pull off but they managed to mix enough action with recognizable characters and a fairly good story that ended up making the film very enjoyable and quite fun. The film had a good balance of story and action with just a little twist of historic relevance that made it quite entertaining.

The films manages to walk that fine line between action and drama that always makes these kinds of films very good if they can find the ability to do so. You need the story because the world of comics is all about the story but you also need the action to flesh out the film like watching comic book panels come to life. X-men First Class finds that fine balance between these two worlds with a great plot about the Cuban missile crisis that also allows for great action and fight sequences. All the while developing back stories for its main characters of Professor X and Magneto leading to the best X-men movie since the original sequel.

The thing about the world of the X-men is there are so many mutants and so many stories that could be told but for the most part either the producers of the films or the fans think they should stick with the most widely known characters which is a shame. The prequel is clearly about Magneto and Professor X before they became enemies and all the characters kind of take a back stage to these two prominent stories. The problem is that they just really don’t do as good of a job as they could have with these two characters at times. You never see that deep friendship or bond that is hinted at in the previous films and it just seems that Magneto was always an angry and violent man that Xavier shared a short amount of time with. This was the lone downfall to an otherwise very good film.

One thing the film does ask of you is to forget the actors that previously played some of the more prominent roles like Professor X, Magneto and Mystique. This is because James McAvoy is nothing like Patrick Stewart just like Michael Fassbender is nothing like Ian McKellan. There is no resemblance in the actors much less in their performances but once you get past this both Fassbender and McAvoy do fine jobs as their characters. The acting isn’t as star cast as the previous films and does lack a little from this but the actors do a tough job of playing the characters already previously played very well. X-Men First Class is a fun summer blockbuster popcorn film worth seeing.

Grade: B+