After a long day of keeping us dangling until half of us were ready to leave our desks, Fox premiered the first trailer for X-Men: First Class on Facebook. It’s an appropriate place to debut so much youthful angst and young lust.
And First Class definitely brings the anguish. I’m glad to see the X-Men taken seriously, but this seems a little overwrought, especially when you’re slyly winking towards Basic Instinct. (You’ll see it.)
However, the 1960s Silver Age aesthetic is spectacular. It’s got that ’60s action flavor, and the costumes and interiors are lush and retro. The film’s Soviet threat struck me as underwhelming, but upon further thought, small and historical would be a great way to tell the origin of the X-Men. I assume the threat becomes two-fold once the mutants “come out.”
It’s clear, however, that the film belongs to McAvoy and Fassbender and their increasingly frosty battle of wills. Forget the threat, forget the colorful cast, forget the CGI — this movie belongs to them. That might actually work against it if the story is supposed to be something bigger, funkier, and flashier than their differing ideologies.