X-Men: First Class
X-Men: First Class (stylized on-screen as X: First Class) is a 2011 superhero film based on the X-Men characters appearing in Marvel Comics. It is the fourth mainline installment in the X-Men film series and the fifth installment overall. It was directed by Matthew Vaughn and produced by Bryan Singer, and stars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Rose Byrne, Jennifer Lawrence, January Jones, Oliver Platt, and Kevin Bacon. At the time of its release, it was intended to be a franchise reboot[7] and contradicted the events of previous films; however, the follow-up film X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) retconned First Class into a prequel to X-Men (2000). First Class is set primarily in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and focuses on the relationship between Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr / Magneto, and the origin of their groups—the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Mutants, respectively, as they deal with the Hellfire Club led by Sebastian Shaw, a mutant supremacist bent on enacting nuclear war.
For the comic series, see X-Men: First Class (comics).X-Men: First Class
- Ashley Edward Miller
- Zack Stentz
- Jane Goldman
- Matthew Vaughn
- Lauren Shuler Donner
- Bryan Singer
- Simon Kinberg
- Gregory Goodman
20th Century Fox
- May 25, 2011 (Ziegfeld Theatre)
- June 1, 2011 (United Kingdom)
- June 3, 2011 (United States)
132 minutes[1]
English
German
French
$353.6 million[6]
Producer Lauren Shuler Donner first thought of a prequel based on the young X-Men during the production of X2; producer Simon Kinberg later suggested to 20th Century Fox an adaptation of the comic series X-Men: First Class, although the film does not follow the comic closely. Singer, who had directed both X-Men and X2, became involved with the project in 2009, but he could only produce and co-write First Class due to his work on other projects. Vaughn became the director, and also wrote the final script with his writing partner Jane Goldman. Principal photography began in August 2010 and concluded in December, with additional filming completed in April 2011. Locations included Oxford, the Mojave Desert and Georgia, with soundstage work done in both Pinewood Studios and the 20th Century Fox stages in Los Angeles. The depiction of the 1960s drew inspiration from the James Bond films of the period.
First Class premiered in Ziegfeld Theatre on May 25, 2011, and was released in the United States on June 3, 2011. It was a box office success, becoming the seventh highest-grossing in the film series, and received positive reviews from critics and audiences, who praised its acting, screenplay, direction, action sequences, visual effects, and musical score. The film's success re-popularized the X-Men film franchise with various installments following, including a number of sequels focusing on younger iterations of the X-Men characters, with X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), X-Men: Apocalypse (2016), and X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019).
Plot[edit]
In 1944, at the Auschwitz concentration camp, Nazi officer Klaus Schmidt witnesses a young Erik Lehnsherr bending a metal gate with his mind upon being separated from his parents. Schmidt brings Erik into his office and tells him to move a coin on his desk. When Erik cannot do it, Schmidt kills his mother. Distraught, Erik's magnetic power manifests, destroying the room. Separately, at a mansion in Westchester County, New York, child telepath Charles Xavier meets Raven, whose natural form is blue-skinned scales and a shapeshifter, and invites her to live with him.
In 1962, Erik is tracking Schmidt, while Xavier earns his doctorate from the University of Oxford. In Las Vegas, CIA officer Moira MacTaggert follows U.S. Army Colonel Hendry into the Hellfire Club, where she sees Schmidt (now called Sebastian Shaw) with mutant telepath Emma Frost, cyclone-producing Riptide, and teleporter Azazel. Threatened by Shaw and teleported to the Joint War Room, Hendry advocates deploying nuclear missiles in Turkey. Shaw, an energy-absorbing mutant whose powers have kept him young, later kills Hendry.
Moira, seeking Xavier's advice on mutation, takes him and Raven to the CIA, where they convince Director McCone that mutants exist and Shaw is a threat. Another CIA officer sponsors the mutants and invites them to the secret "Division X" facility. Moira and Xavier find Shaw as Erik is attacking him, and Xavier rescues Erik from drowning before Shaw escapes. Xavier brings Erik to Division X, where they meet Hank McCoy, a mutant scientist with prehensile feet. Xavier uses McCoy's mutant-locating device, Cerebro, to seek and recruit other mutants. Xavier and Erik recruits stripper Angel Salvadore, cabbie Armando Muñoz, Army prisoner Alex Summers, and drifter Sean Cassidy.
Xavier, Erik, and Moira leads a CIA mission to the Soviet Union to capture Frost and discover Shaw intends to start World War III, triggering mutant ascendency. Azazel, Riptide, and Shaw attack Division X, killing everyone but the mutants, whom Shaw invites to join him. Salvadore accepts; but when Alex and Muñoz retaliate, Shaw kills Muñoz. In Moscow, Shaw compels the general to have the USSR install missiles in Cuba. Wearing a helmet that blocks telepathy, Shaw follows the Soviet fleet in a submarine to ensure the missiles break a U.S. blockade. In the meantime, Xavier takes the remaining recruits back to his mansion where they focus on harnessing their abilities. McCoy believes Raven's DNA may provide a "cure" for their appearance and manages to get a cure ready, but Raven, after being persuaded by Erik, decides she doesn't want to hide her identity and refuses the cure. McCoy uses the cure on himself but it backfires, giving him blue fur and leonine aspects.
With McCoy piloting, the mutants and Moira take a jet to the blockade line, where Xavier uses his telepathy to influence a Soviet sailor to destroy the ship carrying the missiles, and Erik uses his magnetic power to lift Shaw's submarine from the water, depositing it on land. During the ensuing battle, Erik seizes Shaw's helmet, allowing Xavier to immobilize Shaw. While Shaw is helpless, Erik reveals he shares Shaw's exclusivist view of mutants, but desires to avenge his mother, and pushes the Nazi coin he has been carrying since childhood through Shaw's brain, killing him. Unable to risk releasing Shaw, Xavier begs Erik to stop, but is forced to experience Shaw's death.
Fearful of the mutants, both fleets fire at the mutants, which Erik intercepted. As Erik turns the arsenal back toward the fleet, Moira tries to stop Erik by shooting him, but he deflects the bullets, one of which hits Xavier in the spine. Erik rushes to help Xavier and, distracted, allows the artillery to fall harmlessly into the ocean. Parting with Xavier over their differing views on the relationship between mutants and humans, Erik leaves with Salvadore, Azazel, Riptide and Raven. Later, a wheelchair-using Xavier and his mutants returns to the mansion, where he intends to open a school. Moira promises Xavier never to reveal his location, but Xavier makes sure of this by wiping her memories. Meanwhile, Erik, now naming himself Magneto, and the other Hellfire Club members free Frost from her prison.
Additionally, co-stars include Glenn Morshower as Colonel Hendry, a US Army officer coerced by the Hellfire Club; Matt Craven as CIA Director McCone; Rade Šerbedžija as Russian General. Annabelle Wallis appears as Amy, a young woman with heterochromia; Don Creech as William Stryker, father of Major William Stryker (a character who appears in X2, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, X-Men: Days of Future Past, and X-Men: Apocalypse);[39] Michael Ironside; Ray Wise;[40] James Remar; Brendan Fehr; Demetri Goritsas; Ludger Pistor; Aleksander Krupa; Tony Curran; and Sasha Pieterse also portrayed small roles in this film. Beth Goddard appears as Mrs. Xavier. Hugh Jackman reprises his role as Wolverine in an uncredited cameo in a bar, telling Xavier and Lehnsherr to "go fuck yourself" after they approach him for recruitment. Jackman said he accepted the offer to appear because "it sounded perfect to me", particularly for Wolverine being the only character with a swear word.[41] X-Men creator Stan Lee, who appeared in the first and third movie and regularly made cameos in other Marvel-based movies, explained that he was unable to participate in First Class because "they shot it too far away".[42]
Production[edit]
Development[edit]
During the production of X2, producer Lauren Shuler Donner had discussed the idea of a film focusing on the young X-Men with the crew, which was met with approval; the concept was revived during the production of X-Men: The Last Stand.[43] One of The Last Stand's writers, Zak Penn, was hired to write and direct this spin-off,[44] but this idea later fell through.[45] Penn explained in 2007 that "the original idea was to have me do a young X-Men spin-off, a spin-off of the young X-Men characters. But someone came up with a pretty interesting idea ... it was this guy who worked with me named Mike Chamoy, he worked a lot with me on X3. He came up with how to do a young X-Men movie which is not what you'd expect."[45]
Around the same time, in December 2004, 20th Century Fox hired screenwriter Sheldon Turner to draft a spin-off X-Men film, and he chose to write Magneto, pitching it as "The Pianist meets X-Men."[46][47] According to Turner, the script he penned was set from 1939 to 1955,[48] following Magneto trying to survive in Auschwitz. He meets Xavier, a young soldier, during the liberation of the camp. He hunts down the Nazi war criminals who tortured him, and this lust for vengeance turns him and Xavier into enemies.[49] In April 2007, David S. Goyer was hired to direct. The film would take place mostly in flashbacks with actors in their twenties, with Ian McKellen's older Magneto as a framing device,[49] and some usage of the computer-generated facelift applied to him in the prologue of X-Men: The Last Stand,[50] McKellen reiterated his hope to open and close the film.[51] The Magneto film was planned to shoot in Australia for a 2009 release,[52][53] but factors including the 2007–08 Writers Guild of America strike caused the producers to cancel plans for the movie.[54]
As producer Simon Kinberg read the comic series X-Men: First Class, he suggested studio 20th Century Fox to adapt it. Kinberg, however, did not want to follow the comic too much, as he felt "it was not fresh enough in terms of storytelling", considering them too similar to Twilight and John Hughes movies, and also because the producers wanted an adaptation that would introduce new characters.[43] Both Kinberg and Shuler Donner said that they wanted characters with visuals and powers that had not been seen and that worked well as an ensemble, even if they did not work together in the comics.[17] Shuler Donner later said that the original idea was to green-light First Class depending on the success of X-Men Origins: Magneto.[55] That project was seeking approval to film in Washington, D.C.,[56] and by December 2008, Goyer said filming would begin if X-Men Origins: Wolverine was successful. The story was moved forward to 1962, and involves Xavier and Magneto battling a villain.[57]
In 2008, Josh Schwartz was hired to write the screenplay, while declining the possibility of directing X-Men: First Class.[58] Fox later approached Bryan Singer, director of X-Men and X2, in October 2009.[59] Schwartz later said that Singer dismissed his work as "he wanted to make a very different kind of movie",[60] with the director instead writing his own treatment which was then developed into a new script by Jamie Moss.[59]
In 2009, Ian McKellen confirmed that he would not be reprising his role as Magneto in the Origins movie citing his age,[61] and Shuler Donner stated that the movie might never be made,[62] stating it was "at the back of the queue" in the studio's priorities.[63] Both Donner and Bryan Singer have stated that Magneto would not be produced as the plot of X-Men: First Class "superseded" the story of the planned film.[64][65] Singer denied using Sheldon Turner's script for Magneto as inspiration to write his draft of First Class,[66] but the Writers Guild of America arbitration still credited Turner for the film's story, while Moss and Schwartz's collaborations ended up uncredited.[67][68] Singer set the film in a period where Xavier and Magneto were in their twenties, and seeing that it was during the 1960s, added the Cuban Missile Crisis as a backdrop, considering it would be interesting to "discuss this contemporary concept in a historical context". Shuler Donner suggested the Hellfire Club as the villains.[43]
In addition to Moss, Ashley Edward Miller and Zack Stentz were hired to rewrite the script. Miller compared it tonally to Singer's work on the first two X-Men films.[69] The pair centered the film on Xavier and Magneto's relationship, and wrote the other characters and storylines in terms of "how they fit in the tension between Erik and Charles".[43] Singer dropped out of the director's position in March 2010 due to his commitment to a Jack the Giant Killer adaptation. He formalized his duties from director to producer.[70]
The producers listed various possible directors, but at first did not consider Matthew Vaughn because he started working on The Last Stand before backing out. After seeing Vaughn's satirical superhero film Kick-Ass (2010), Kinberg decided to contact Vaughn to see if he would be interested in First Class.[43] When Fox offered Vaughn the "chance to reboot X-Men and put your stamp all over it", he first thought the studio was joking, but accepted after discovering that it was to be set in the 1960s.[71] The director stated that First Class would become the opportunity to combine many of his dream projects: "I got my cake and ate it, managed to do an X-Men movie, and a Bond thing, and a Frankenheimer political thriller at the same time".[8] Vaughn signed on as Singer's replacement in May 2010, and Fox subsequently announced a June 3, 2011 release date.[72] Vaughn also rewrote the script with his screenwriting partner Jane Goldman, adding new characters and changing existing character arcs and dynamics—for instance, the idea of a love triangle between Xavier, Magneto and Moira MacTaggert was cut.[43] The character of Sunspot was also cut, as the director felt that "we didn't have enough time or money" to make the character work. Vaughn and Goldman considered including mentions to the civil rights movement, but ultimately the director felt that "I had enough political subplot in this movie". Vaughn stated that his biggest concern was to both make Erik and Charles' friendship believable given the short timespan of the film, and on how the character of Magneto was built—"Shaw was the villain, but now you're seeing all those elements of Shaw going into Magneto."[8] An action scene that was to have been set in a dream sequence with revolving rooms was scrapped after the release of Inception (2010).[73]
Describing his thought process towards the material, Vaughn said he was motivated by "unfinished business" with Marvel, having been previously involved with the production of both X-Men: The Last Stand[71] and Thor.[7] Vaughn declared that he was more enthusiastic about First Class than The Last Stand due to not being constrained by the previous installments, and having the opportunity to "start fresh", while "nodding towards" the successful elements from those films.[7] Vaughn compared First Class to both Batman Begins (2005), which restarted a franchise with an unseen approach,[74] and the 2009 Star Trek film, which paid homage to the original source material while taking it in a new direction with a fresh, young cast.[75] Regarding continuity, Vaughn said his intention was "to make as good a film that could stand on its own two feet regardless of all the other films" and also that could "reboot and start a whole new X-Men franchise".[7] Goldman added the film was kind of an "alternate history" for the X-Men, saying that while rebooting, the writers did not want to go fully "against the canon of the X-Men trilogy", comparing to the various approaches the comic had in over fifty years of publication.[76]
The film also resurrects a central concept in the comics, the fact that radiation is one of the causes of genetic mutation in the X-Men fictional universe, and incorporates it into the story line. The concept went unused in previous years because writers in the comics more often attributed the phenomenon of mutation mostly to evolution and natural selection.
Release[edit]
Theatrical[edit]
The premiere for X-Men: First Class took place at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York City, on May 25, 2011.[96] The promotional campaign aimed for non-traditional partners, with Fox signing deals with Farmers Insurance Group, BlackBerry PlayBook and the U.S. Army.[97] Wrigley Australia issued an X-Men-themed edition of their 5 chewing gum.[98]
Home media[edit]
X-Men: First Class was released on DVD and Blu-ray in the US on September 27 and in the UK on October 31, 2011.[99][100] The home release topped the sales charts in the United States[101] with approximately 385,000 DVDs.[102] Blu-ray accounted for 60 percent of first-week disc sales, amounting to about 575,000 discs.[103] In the UK it sold 150,000 units.[104] The film was later released on 4K UHD Blu-ray on October 4, 2016.[105]
Reception[edit]
Box office[edit]
X-Men: First Class went on general release on June 3, 2011. In North America, the film opened on approximately 6,900 screens at 3,641 locations, debuting atop the weekend box office with earnings of $55.1 million across the three days,[106][107] including $3.4 million in its Friday midnight launch.[108] This opening was much lower than the opening weekends of X-Men: The Last Stand ($102.7 million), X2 ($85.5 million), and X-Men Origins: Wolverine ($85.0 million), but slightly higher than the original film ($54.5 million).[107] Executives at 20th Century Fox stated they had achieved their goal by opening with about the same numbers as the first X-Men film and that it was an excellent start to a new chapter of the franchise.[106]
First Class also opened 8,900 locations in 74 overseas markets, which brought in $61 million during the weekend—standing third in the overseas ranking behind Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and The Hangover Part II. The film opened atop the box office in twenty countries, with the biggest grosses being in the United Kingdom ($9 million, including previews), France ($7.1 million), Mexico ($5 million), South Korea ($5.4 million) and Australia ($5.1 million).[109] In its second weekend X-Men: First Class dropped 56.2 percent, the second-smallest second-weekend drop in the franchise behind X2: X-Men United (53.2 percent), and came in with $24.1 million, in second place to Super 8.[110] Overseas, it rose to number two behind Kung Fu Panda 2, with $42.2 million.[111] The film grossed $146,408,305 in the United States and Canada and $207,215,819 in foreign markets, bringing its worldwide total to $353,624,124.[6]
Critical response[edit]
On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes X-Men: First Class holds an approval rating of 86% based on 299 reviews, with an average rating of 7.4/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "With a strong script, stylish direction, and powerful performances from its well-rounded cast, X-Men: First Class is a welcome return to form for the franchise."[112] On Metacritic, the film received a score of 65 out of 100, based on reviews from 38 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[113] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.[114]
Among the major trade publications, Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter described the film as "audacious, confident and fueled by youthful energy", and said that "director Vaughn impressively maintains a strong focus dedicated to clarity and dramatic power ... and orchestrates the mayhem with a laudable coherence, a task made easier by a charging, churning score by Henry Jackman ...".[115] Justin Chang of Variety said the film "feels swift, sleek and remarkably coherent", and that "the visual effects designed by John Dykstra are smoothly and imaginatively integrated ..."[116] Frank Lovece of Film Journal International lauded "a wickedly smart script with a multilayered theme that ... never loses sight of its ultimate story, and makes each emotional motivation interlock, often shockingly playing for keeps with its characters."[117]
In consumer publications, Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly praised "the kind of youthful, Brit-knockabout pop energy director Matthew Vaughn absorbed from his previous collaborations as producer of director Guy Ritchie's bloke-y larks", and found McAvoy and Fassbender "a casting triumph. These two have, yes, real star magnetism, both individually and together: They're both cool and intense, suave and unaffected, playful and dead serious about their grand comic-book work."[118] Peter Howell of the Toronto Star called it "a blockbuster with brains" and said Vaughn "brings similar freshness to this comic creation as he did to Kick-Ass, and manages to do so while hewing to the saga's serious dramatic intent."[119]