X-Men: First Class

I have a complicated relationship with X-Men. Mainly because I'm not a cartoon fan, but also because movies of this genre typically seem to be 'boys movies', with a lot of fighting. Not really my scene.

When the second X-Men film came out, my friend sat me down and told me not to move until i'd seen the entire first film. I whinged about how much I was going to hate it, and told her I had much better things to do with my time.

Unfortunately for me, she got to laugh in my face and say 'I told you so', when I really quite enjoyed it. I went off to the second movie happily and enjoyed the adventures of these mutants. While my interest in the X-Men story didn't die, I did find other things to fill my time with and wasn't too concerned about seeing the later X-Men films.

That was until X-Men: First Class was released. A film about the young Xavier (Professor X) and Eric (Magneto) sounded like one I couldn't miss. It follows the discovery of Raven (Mystique) by Xavier followed by the gathering of a team of mutants, Hank, Angel, Armando (Darwin), Alex (Havok) and Sean (Banshee).

This was a film that had been the subject of a significant amount of hype in the media, which consequently meant I was expecting a lot of this film. To be honest, I wasn't disappointed.

The film begins in 1944 during the childhood of Eric, a young boy who is stuck in a German concentration camp and can move metal with his mind; Xavier, a young telepath who lives in the mansion in the New York countryside; and Raven a homeless young shape-shifter.

The film then skips forward to 1962 when three mutants are in their late teens. It follows as Xavier (James McAvoy) and Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) meet CIA agent Moira MacTaggert (Rose Byrne) who has recently witnessed the Hellfire Club; Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), Emma Frost (January Jones) and Azazel (Jason Flemyng) displaying their mutant powers.

What follows is Xavier's mission to stop Shaw's plan to launch World War Three. Xavier then teams up with Eric (Michael Fassbender) and they set out to find a group of mutants to help shut down Shaw's operations.

X-Men: First Class looks into the complex relationships formed by the mutants and between the mutants and humans. It lays the foundations of the X-Men trilogy in a captivating and intriguing way which shed light on the various components of the trilogy.

While the X-Men films may not be for everyone, I really think this film lived up to its hype. It is a brilliant prequel to the trilogy and I would recommend anyone thinking of watching the trilogy for the first time to check out X-Men: First Class before going any further, particularly if, like me, they're not a fan of comics.