Substantial themes, provocative insights in ‘X-Men’ prequel

Viewers’ interest in screen mutants remains high, so filmmakers are only too happy to continue stroking the goose that has been laying all those golden eggs at the box office.

The latest “mutant fest,” “X-Men: First Class,” expands the genre’s audience to include the youth market by fielding some eight “student” mutants, each with his or her own unique superpower – and monumental chip on the shoulder.

To make the storytelling even more ambitious, the film sets a lot of its plot in the distant past to dramatize its lead mutants’ back stories and motivations. In the case of Magneto’s tale, we see the driving force of his anger starting as early as the Second World War, when his Jewish mother was killed in a Nazi concentration camp – thus impelling him on a lifelong mission to hunt down her killer, who later resurfaces as the movie’s villain, Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon).

The ’40s become the ’60s super-swiftly in director Matthew Vaughn’s constantly fast-forwarding scenario, and the “old” and “new” mutants find themselves involved in – hey, now, nothing less than the missile stand-off in Cuba, when John F. Kennedy engaged the Soviets in a high-stakes staring game of death – and they blinked!

So, how in blazes did the mutants get involved in that historic event? It turns out (in the movie’s fictive unspooling of its fantasticating ball of yarn) that Shaw is a “secret” mutant who wants the world’s good and bad guys to exterminate each other, so that only the Mutant Race can rightfully reign over the planet.

Oh, brother. That far-out scenario could be much too fantastic for some viewers –but, it looks like most sci-fi film fans are willing to go on a far-out fun trip, so the production obliges with even more improbable fantasy flourishes.

Long sequence

There comes the time, however, when the whole shebang gets to be too wild and woolly even for a take-no-prisoner sci-fi caper – as in the long sequence in which a swarm of good-guy and bad-guy missiles keep changing course, because the super-brains controlling them are having second and third thoughts!

It’s in scenes like that where the film’s cleverness and wild imagination exceeds itself and becomes unintentionally silly. Alas, super mutant powers and “accidental” comedy simply don’t mix, so the key scene ends, not with a bang, but with a silly simper.

Other low blows include the young mutants’ overlong training scenes, and the fact that some of their skills may be innovative and “cute,” but they’re no match for the villains’ truly prodigious superpowers, when push really comes to shove.

Enormous powers

To make things worse, Kevin Bacon is miscast as the movie’s main villain. Yes, he’s able to conjure up enormous powers, thanks to the production’s special effects wizards, but he doesn’t come across as truly fearsome, because – well, he’s Kevin Bacon.

Thankfully, Michael Fassbender (Magneto) and James McAvoy (Professor X) do better, so the movie is able to recover some of the believable and congruent gravitas it needs to end up, all told, as an exciting viewing experience.

Best of all, through all of its fantasticating tours de force, “X-Men: First Class” is still able to dramatize and vivify its substantial themes and provocative cinematic insights – including its mordant study of humans’ fear and hate of the mutant “others” who aren’t like them, and thus don’t deserve to be trusted, let alone understood, embraced and loved.