X-Men: First Class

X-Men: First Class (2011) dir. Matthew Vaughn
Starring: Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence, Kevin Bacon, January Jones

**1/2

By Alan Bacchus

Well, it’s been five X-Men films thus far over 10+ years, and by now it’s pretty clear there’s a formula that doesn’t quite fit the big screen. This latest entry in the saga suffers from the same problems as the first four. Despite some excellent sequences and genuine emotional attachment to some of the characters, the need to ‘go big’ and bombard us with overly produced set pieces of earth-encompassing grandeur drowns the picture in excess.

Kick Ass was an excellent comic book film. It was comedic, tragic and horrific in equal measure from a shit-hot director with keen visual and aural sensibilities. With X-Men: First Class we definitely get the sense it’s a Matthew Vaughn film. Here Vaughn has fun with some James Bond-style world domination plotting, dancing go-go girls in hot pants and bras, and fun ‘60s split-screen effects. Considering his two main characters are British, his style effectively matches them.

Cleverly, Vaughn and the producers go back to the original opening sequence of the Bryan Singer-directed X-Men (2000), as we see Magneto as a child being removed from his parents in a concentration camp and then demonstrating his powers to the Nazis. It’s a great sequence that expertly sets up the misdirected rage Magneto exhibits in the present. X-Men: First Class expands on this scene and shows exactly what happened to that kid and his relationship with the Nazis, specifically a particularly cruel (and hidden mutant) Sebastian Shaw played by Kevin Bacon.

In the ‘60s we get to see the elder child Magneto (aka Erik Lehnsher), now in his 20s, hunting down the Nazis who had his mother murdered in front of his eyes. Meanwhile, we also get to see the Cold War played out by Russian and American spies in the backdrop of real history (i.e., the placement of US missiles in Turkey and the onset of the Cuban Missile Crisis). Charles Xavier gets recruited by the CIA to find fellow mutants whose powers just might help the cause. Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) shows up starting off as an ally of Xavier’s before meeting and falling in love with his future enemy, Magneto. A host of other mutants include Beast, Angel, Riptide, Havok and Banshee, who all learn their powers in the first congregation of the X-Men school – hence the title, First Class.

Michael Fassbender is the star here. His edgy, internalized trauma trumps the boyishness of James McAvoy’s Xavier. The film works best in his journey to personal vendetta. Everything else in the film is fodder. Vaughn and company expertly execute the true conflict that lies at the heart of the X-Men stories, which is the opposite philosophy of Xavier’s peaceful integration and Magneto’s survival by any means necessary. Vaughn cleverly shows how thin a line exists between good and evil, and how Magneto’s noble but warped mind would result in the massive destruction we would see later in the series. This is the stuff the best comic book films are made of.

Unfortunately, the film suffers from an overload of characters and overly produced set pieces in the second half, which dilutes the beautiful and powerful moments in the opening half. Jennifer Lawrence, while terrific in Winter’s Bone, feels miscast here. Her performance is lifeless, and sadly but honestly, her baby-ish face doesn’t look that great in the blue makeup. Sure it’s crass, but it’s important. Like all the other X-Men movies, there’s too wide a range in the mutants' abilities. Some characters get to raise tornadoes, while others simply have big feet. And really, a lot of these characters look plain silly.

Going back a few months, I remember being disappointed at the departure of Darren Aronofsky from his Wolverine picture. Despite multiple directors not being able to truly ‘crack’ this franchise as well as Iron Man and Batman, perhaps it's the fault of producer Lauren Shuler-Donner, as she is the common thread between all these pictures. I can’t help but think an effort to squeeze Aronofsky into this blockbuster formula resulted in him leaving the project. If so, then it’s for the best.

Kick Ass

Kick Ass (2010) dir. Matthew Vaughn
Starring: Aaron Johnson, Chloe Grace Moretz, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Mark Strong, Nicolas Cage

****

By Alan Bacchus

Cudos to the filmmakers who refused to ‘tone down’ this film and thus make it palatable to broader audiences and thus more box-office friendly. Unfortunately it’s a shame the film didn’t make more waves at the box office, because ‘Kick Ass’ is a great picture and by far the best of this new wave of self-reverential graphic novel filmic adaptations.

‘Kick Ass’ is as up-to-date to modern youth as possible. In an era of hyperfast information dissemination, the film smartly plugs in technological tools, youtube, skype, twitter and other viral social networking outlets, to tell its origin story of superheroes in the modern world - superheroes who are acutely aware of what an ‘origin story is’. It’s perhaps the only film that has used these tools as organicly as it does (Although if anything, with the prevalence of MySpace and the absence of Facebook, likely due to an exclusive product placement deal, loses the film some credibility points).

Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) is a typical high schooler, he masturbates a lot, is self-conscious and fearful of his place in the teenage social strata and, of course, he voraciously reads comics and watches hip ultraviolent movies. While he and his pop culturally-aware buddies natter on about geek cultural benchmarks like John Woo and Scott Pilgrim, Dave questions the plausibility of a real world omic book hero. And so, after getting mugged he dons a wet suit, assumes the name ‘Kick Ass’ and goes out into the world as his own personal vigilante of justice. After his first altercation with crime gets videotapeded on a cellphone and then youtubed for the world to see, he becomes an internet sensation.

Meanwhile there’s a real vigilante out on the streets fighting some more nefarious criminals – a former defrocked cop and his 11 year old daughter affectionately named Big Daddy(Nicolas Cage) and Hit Girl (Chloe Morentz) who pack more firepower, street smarts and real hardcore violent tendencies than Kick Ass could ever dream of. When they discover they have a mutual enemy in local gangster thug Frank D’Amico (baddie du jour, Mark Strong), Kick Ass, Hit Girl and Big Daddy team up forming a legitimate crime fighting team.

The intensity of action, violence, and relentless teen-aged angst transformed into cursive bloodletting seems like a cathartic reaction to get everything right that Hollywood has ever gotten wrong in the world of comic-to-film adaptations. As if Vaughn is making up for all the griping of the fanboys of the world for the collective disappointment at say, ‘The Punisher’ or ‘The Watchmen’.

Kick Ass achieves what the “Watchmen” couldn’t seem to do - self-analyze the influence of comics as an influential form of storytelling for today’s youth. Vaughn’s influences range from the naughty depiction of Luc Besson’s violent child assassin in training character in ‘Leon/The Professional’ to the archetypal deconstruction of the genre in ‘Unbreakable’ to action-influenced bullet-porn of ‘The Matrix’.

'Kick Ass' succeeds not because of its genre due diligence but its core relationships and despite its clever self-awareness we’re never let the audience off the hook for an emotional and melodramatic attachment to its characters There’s a death in this film, which, amid mondo bullets, blood, slo-mo jumping, explosions etc, manages to hit us so deeply with great sadness, it’s the moment in the film when as an audience member, you realize you’re watching something truly memorable.

STARDUST

Stardust (2007) dir. Matthew Vaughn
Starring: Claire Danes, Charlie Cox, Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert De Niro, Sienna Miller

**

Every three months or so in the past two years there’s been another Tier 2 fantasy film. If Tier 1 is “LOTR”, “Potter” and “Narnia”, Tier 2 would be “Bridge to Terebithia” or “Eragon”. “Stardust” features a top tier cast, a hot new director, a lauded novel, but unfortunately “Stardust” settles into the lowly Tier 2 level of fantasy.

After some voiceover from Ian McKellan (puh-lease) the film jumps right into the story. We are told there’s a city called “Wall” built next to a wall to another world. The hole in the wall that leads to the other world is protected by a singular old man. A young man approaches, tricks him into the looking the other way and jumps to the other side. Is that it? Is that all the backstory explanation we get of this other world? There’s no cinematic build up or reveal or mythology to nuance. It all happened to too fast for me to accept. Remember “Narnia” took its time before revealing the new world in the closet. Same with “Wizard of Oz” – both films used its first act to lay the groundwork and foreshadow the events about to take place. Gaiman, Vaughn and the bunch throw us into the deep end right away.

I digress. The young man who crosses into the fantasy Kingdom of Stormhold beds a witch’s slave (a yummy Kate Magowan) and fathers a young boy. This boy grows up in the real world to be a young gent named Tristan (Charlie Cox). While gazing into the stars he sees a shooting star and offers to collect it for his girlfriend (Sienna Miller) as a show of his love. Tristan crosses the wall and the adventure begins.

But the falling star isn’t a falling star, it arbitrarily turns into Yvaine (Clare Danes). So Tristan decides to escort Claire Danes back home. How would he explain that to his girlfriend? There are the evil witches, led by Michelle Pfeiffer (Lamia) who need the fallen star to recapture their youth. There’s also a group of warring princes who need the star in order to claim their right to Peter O’Toole’s dying throne. Along the way Tristan and Yvaine are helped by a group of pirates who ply the skies in a flying pirate ship. Tristan and Yvaine bicker throughout the journey but eventually realize they are falling in love.

None of the scenes gave me the sense of wonder or myth we expect from a film of this genre. Though I can’t substantiate it, much of the film seemed to take place at night. Visually this is dull, especially for fantasy. As mentioned, the backstory is given to us too fast and so the ‘rules’ of the world are never clear. Things just jump out at us because we are told to accept it. Nothing is earned. Also, with some great actors like De Niro, Pfeiffer, Danes and even supporting characters like Ricky Gervais and Peter O’Toole, the choice of Charlie Cox (who?) as the lead is a head-scratcher. He’s uncharismatic and dull as dishwater. And how he’s able to snag both Claire Danes and Sienna Miller requires a big leap of faith.

“Stardust” feels like an 1980’s fantasy film - “The Neverending Story” or “Time Bandits” - but nostalgia for these films isn’t enough to sustain a subpar narrative and unimaginative visuals. I’ve never read Neil Gaiman, but he’s often spoken in the league of Alan Moore and Frank Miller. Matthew Vaughn, who produced the first two Guy Ritchie films and directed his own Brit-crime “Layer Cake” is the director. You may remember he bowed out of “X-Men 3” and took on this project instead. Despite these high credentials the film is lackluster fantasy.

“Stardust” is now available on DVD from Paramount Home Entertainment. Buy it here: Stardust (Widescreen Edition)

Stardust