"My name is Erik Lensherr. You killed my mother, prepare to die."

Professor Charles Xavier: Erik, you said yourself - we're the better men. This is the time to prove it. There are thousands of men on those ships, good, honest, innocent men. They're just following orders! 

Erik Lensherr: I've been at the mercy of men just following orders... never again! 

X-Men:  First Class

I've explained my doubts regarding prequels in a previous post, and to be honest, left to my own devices I probably would have skipped X-Men: First Class.  However, the reclusive Ms. Smith decided that she wanted to see the latest adventure of Charles Xavier's students on the big screen, and given the rarity of movie outings with Laurie in the last few years, I felt that it would be unreasonable to refuse to accompany her.

That being said, I was unexpectedly pleased by First Class, which turned out to be a far more interesting and dramatic piece than I had anticipated.

Ostensibly, First Class deals with the origin of the X-Men, and how Professor X and Magneto met and became friends before their eventual moral division.  (Not to mention the whole wheelchair question.)  However, it's immediately evident that First Class is really about Erik Lensherr, and Charles Xavier ends up with something very close to a supporting role.

Lensherr, as portrayed by Michael Fassbender, is a surprising anti-hero whose magnetic abilities are still developing.  Fassbender has a commanding on-screen presence and his Magneto is a forceful, dynamic character who is willing to sacrifice anything and everything in the name of vengeance.

However, I was intensely disappointed by the change in motivation behind that desire for revenge.  One of the more intelligent developments over the lifetime of the X-Men has been the move toward mutation as a metaphor in the discussion of prejudice and bigotry.  The question of mutation as a "curable affliction" is resonant with connections to being gay, and Storm provides an obvious link between the treatment of mutants and the treatment of people of colour. This concept has been part of the X-Men plotline for decades now, with the 1982 Marvel Graphic Novel God Loves, Man Kills being one of the best stand-alone explorations of the idea.

Placing Magneto's origin in the Holocaust provided historical depth to the metaphor, which deepened and extended the motivation behind his struggle against humanity far beyond his original role as a common criminal. Having Lensherr's mother killed by the evil mutant Sebastian Shaw - Kevin Bacon taking a villainous turn -  cheapens that metaphor:  as I've already discussed, comic book characters with their origins in parental trauma are a dime a dozen.

As with previous X-Men movies, the script stirs the traditional comic book timeline with a large spoon.  Cyclops, Iceman and the Beast were all approximately the same age in the original X-Men, whereas First Class introduces us to the young Hank McCoy, before his metamorphosis into the blue-furred middle-aged figure we meet in Last Stand.  One of his teammates in First Class is Havok - Alex Summers, who in the original comics was Cyclop's younger brother.*  Another team member is Sean Cassidy, the Banshee, originally an Irish mutant who had been in a relationship with Moira MacTaggert.  In the movie, MacTaggert is both at least a decade older than the Banshee and, mysteriously, transformed from a scientist into a CIA agent.

Questions of continuity aside, the appearance of the X-Men at the Cuban Missile Crisis creates an interesting precedent for future X-Men prequels.  Marvel Comics takes place in what, for want of a better expression, we will call the real world. Whereas Batman prowls the alleys of Gotham, Spider-Man swings through the streets of Manhattan, and although Superman and Captain America both originated during the 1940s, it's only the Captain who made his way to Europe to fight Hitler. 

Having resolved one historical crisis, where will the X-Men next appear?  Will we discover that Lee Harvey Oswald was a renegade mutant?   See Magneto failing to prevent Martin Luther King's death? Or, worse, causing it...

- Sid

* Normally I object to this sort of thing - for example, considering that Star Trek was set on a galactic stage, the cast ran into a lot of friends and relatives - but given the genetic nature of mutant powers, it makes perfect sense for siblings and children to be part of the story.