X-MEN: FIRST CLASS (2011)

After seeing the first four X-Men films over the past decade, I think the biggest surprise for me when watching First Class was that it was actually quite good. While the other films were always 'just okay', thankfully this fifth installment proves that this series is finally learning from it's mistakes and First Class is the first X-Men I've seen that has very little wrong with it - this includes the casting choices and the performances by almost every actor present.

Charles Xavior (James McAvoy) and Erik Lensherr (Michael Fassbender) become friends while on the hunt for the same enemy, Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon). Shaw plays a man with the same goal Magneto will have in later movies - one bent on the idea of exterminating the human race. That is to say, all non-mutants of course. Amongst the two are several newly discovered mutants, including (but not limited to) Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), Beast (Nicholas Hoult) and Emma Frost (January Jones). We also get two relatively surprising but hilarious cameos from Rebecca Romijn and Wolverine himself, Hugh Jackman.

First Class not only steps up in special effects and style, but we end up with a wonderful mixture of humour, action and drama. Even more surprising, is that in his younger days Professor X was a bit of a player - all the while Magneto was nothing but drama, drama, drama. As a person who never read the comic books, I can't comment on whether or not First Class takes the cake for being faithful to the source material. But I'll say it certainly had a nice amount of references to the previous films and I can only hope that any future X-Men films follows the pattern of this installment. Mainly, that story isn't sacrificed for action and effects.

The other really neat thing about this film is that it's not in 3D! Now I don't have a hate on for 3D, in fact it can be downright enjoyable at times. If anything I'm a bigger fan of the super HD digital picture quality. What I realized with First Class though, is that it really doesn't make a lick of difference either way as far as entertainment goes. That's occurred to me before, but this one sealed the deal on the fact that I won't be seeing 3D nearly as much as I used too. Not only that, the lack of 3D in this case only further enforces why First Class is so well done.

X-Men: First Class gets an open door, and is definitely the best X-Men of the bunch. This is not only the best of the rest, but gains a spot for me up there with the best superhero movies of all time, including Spider-Man 2 and The Dark Knight. I hope that along with Wolverine coming out next year, First Class gets a sequel - which I'm sure it will. I'm certainly not done seeing McAvoy and Fassbender in these rolls, and look forward to seeing how the rest of the story and characters tie in as well.

*Stills courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox