X-Men: First Class! (spoilers!)
I guess I could qualify as an infrequent comic-book action-film moviegoer. I’ve seen all three Spiderman films (I still want my money back on that one), the two Batman films and maybe some other ones that must not have been good enough for me to remember. From my limited experience, an action film, particularly a comic book film, typically strives to be “awesome” via its special effects, its action sequences and its hot romances. While all that stuff is fine and dandy with me, it’s not what I want first and foremost. I want a good, complex, compelling story that makes it necessary (or not) to have good special effects, action sequences and hot romance. So when I read all of these blog posts about X-Men: First Class that were focusing on the romantic relationship between Charles Xavier (aka hero and leader of X-Men, Professor X) and Erik Lehnsherr (aka villain Magneto) and saw that the most popular screencaps were of scenes of gasp dialogue, I was suddenly very interested.
Set in the Cold War era on the brink of the famous Cuban Missile Crisis, the Red Scare creates the classic Save the World premise, but takes it a step further. The historical baggage of the era shapes the characters. For one, Erik is a Holocaust survivor whose Mutant power to control metal is brought out through his tortured anger and pain. His powers have been cultivated by the evil villain Kevin Bacon Sebastian Shaw, who used the death of Erik’s mother in the concentration camps to control his emotions and ultimately, make Erik into the man who wants to be good but is magnetically drawn to the unquenchable desire for revenge.
And then he meets the telepathic Charles-a brilliant Oxford student graduate (I enjoyed the shots of the City of Dreaming Spires, oh nostalgia) who majored in Mutant Genetics and is terrible at picking up women because he’s a charming British nerd who’s gayer than a 3 dollar bill-in the middle of his pursuit of Sebastian Shaw. In the midst of a complicated scene in the middle of the ocean, Erik magnetically attaches himself to Shaw’s ship, determined to stop the villain at the risk of his own life. Charles feels Erik’s presence in the water, is determined to save him and dives in after him, grabbing Erik round the middle, entering his mind and telling him “I know what this means to you, but you have to let him go.” Shocked by this random man’s presence, both in his mind and in the water, Erik obeys. No one has connected with him so deeply before, and it sets immediately Charles apart. And he lets Charles in… for a while.
Charles’ complexity comes from his empathy. A telepath’s burden is fraught with the challenge of balancing one’s own mind and feelings with the feelings of others, and his interest in Erik (and by proxy, Erik’s pain) certainly forces him to meet this drama head-on. His fascination with Erik grows into a protective and nurturing relationship as he continues to train him (as well as several other Mutant recruits who are set to serve for the US army). He reaches into Erik’s mind and is able to retrieve memories that Erik had forgotten. Together, they cry over the pain, joy and loss. As Charles’ teary eyes look into Erik’s, it’s clear he wants to relieve Erik of all of his pain, as any lover wants for their partner, but his compassion and goodness prevents him from crossing that line into what would be corrupted powers.
There are many moments like that-poignant, emotional and tragic all at once, because these character see how much they care for each other and yet how they can never truly be together and at peace. But it all falls apart when Charles sees the end of the Missile Crisis as a chance to let humans understand the good power of Mutants, while Erik sees it as a chance to create a war on the humans who have made Mutants into outcasts. So when Erik puts on the Magneto helmet which can block telepathy, he literally shuts Charles out of his life and also heartbreakingly shuts out that bond of hope, respect and compassion that he had found through Charles.
Erik goes on to try and fill that emptiness by befriending Shaw’s sidekick female telepath and Charles’ “adopted” Mutant sister, Mystique. With these two women by his side, the message is clear: these women are supposed to give him what he had supposedly been lacking. However, it’s clear to us that they can never give him what Charles had been trying to give him all along.
While I don’t want to get into the implications of internalized homophobia here, I definitely think the writers were going for that. X-Men has had a history of being considered an allegory for the journey of LGBTQ individuals (which is awesome!!). Ian McKellen apparently pitched the character of Magneto as gay as well. I’m not here to say what’s already been said. I’m here to say that this address of social issues via this film and its premise is what makes it so good.
They even touched on body image in the film, and in a way that was actually positive! There was not a single sex scene, either. While sex scenes are, well, sexy, it was quite a breath of fresh air for me to see a comic book film where the leading woman and leading man aren’t thrown into bed together just because they got top billing. Instead, we have Mystique, a Mutant shape-shifter whose standard blue-skinned form makes her feel insecure about herself. She wants to be seen as beautiful, but must conform to the human standards of beauty to do so, and it literally zaps her energy. She’s even willing at one point to take a medicine that will change her form. But when Erik tells her over and over again (with that sexy, older-and-wiser Mutant smile) that he admires “the real Raven” (her alter-ego name), she hesitantly turns blue… and then there’s no going back.
It’s because these characters struggle with multiple parts of their identity (Mutant, gay, good, evil, revenge/justice, beautiful to oneself vs. others) that the rest of the story falls into place rather well. Nothing seemed beyond the realm of possibilities because the characters made everything believable. So, if you want to see a comic-book film where you’ll have more to talk about than the bombs, special powers and sexy ladies (and men!), definitely go see X-Men.
Overall, 8.5/10