X-Men: First Class

A film set in the 1960s that rebuilds the series from the start. It opens with two children. One bends metal as he is pulled from his mother in a camp; the other meets a girl in the kitchen of a wealthy house. The adult Charles is presenting a thesis at Oxford. Erik is hunting a war criminal and killing everyone he finds along the way. The two meet in pursuit of the same man. Shaw is in a club, then a submarine, and his plan is to push two superpowers into war. From there the film is a story of assembling a team. A list, an agency, a training camp and young mutants. What the narrative is interested in is not power but two roads: Charles argues for living alongside people, Erik for not trusting them, and the film gives each a scene that proves him right. The finale placed around the Cuban crisis is where the two men part, and that moment is the whole purpose of the narrative. Erik's past in the camp is tied directly to the story. In one scene he walks into a bar in Argentina, and that section is the best written part of the film. The period design is its strength. The costume, the titles and the use of split screen imitate the spy films of the 1960s. The production was prepared quickly and the schedule was compressed; even so, the result was taken as one of the tidiest entries in the series. James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Kevin Bacon, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult and Rose Byrne are in the cast. Matthew Vaughn directed. Who it is for: anyone who wants period and character out of a superhero film. Who it is not for: anyone looking for continuity; the film openly contradicts some of what the series established.