Courtesy - The Sunday Leader By Sumaya Samarasinghe
X-Men First Class is the prequel to the X-Men trilogy and one of the best of the series which was sadly losing its appeal and slowly sinking into ridiculous plots and characters – this being often the fate of sequels and prequels.
The movie, which is set mainly during 1962, probably one of the loveliest eras to film, also has the most absurdly good looking cast one could imagine and for the viewers luck, they happen to be excellent actors, starting with Michael Fassbender as a young and troubled Magneto, James Mc Avoy as the idealistic Charles Xavier and future Professor X who is great, but has to, for script purposes spend too much time with his hand on his temple summoning telepathic signals, Jennifer Lawrence whose amazing performance in her first film Winter’s bone” won her an Oscar nomination comes as Mystique, Rose Byrne who became known to a large audience by holding her own against Glenn Close in the mini series Damages and has since then appeared in several successful features is a CIA agent and finally Kevin Bacon needs no introduction since he starred in Footloose in 1984, is excellent as a former Nazi Dr. Schmidt and later as the power hungry Sebastian Shaw.
The film begins during World War II, when a young Erik Lehnsherr, who will later become Magneto watches his parents be taken away by Nazi guards. Terrified at the idea of being separated from his mother and father, Erik seems to be able to, from the power of his mind only filled with anger and anxiety, bend the metal gates that are keeping him away from his loved ones. This attracts the attention of the evil and sadistic Dr. Schmidt who decides to use Erik’s power for his malicious needs. Meanwhile, we see young Charles, living a lonely life in a huge castle until he meets Raven, a mutant whom he raises as his sister.
