X-Men backstory has superpowers, substandards

Can somebody please tell Matthew Vaughn how to direct a movie that builds interest, rather than destroys it entirely?

The X-Men series is so ripe and rich with interesting characters and possible arcs and plots that it seems it would be impossible to dry out that floodplain.

Here, he drains a lot of power out of the backstory of two groups of mutants, one good and the other bad, before they even really started to not like each other.

They first find their callings as superheroes during the peak of the Cold War in 1962. We already knew that Erik Lensherr a.k.a. Magneto (Michael Fassbender) was a young Polish boy in 1944 when the Nazis sent him and his family to a concentration camp. Now in his 20s, he’s out to track down his former captors and tormentors, especially singling out a man named Dr. Schmidt, now known as Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon).

Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) is a British upper crust boy who grows up obsessing about mutation for obvious reasons. He even publishes a thesis on the topic. The guy is so much a nerd that he talks endlessly about it and somehow finds a way to hit on girls (successfully too) while dropping lines about their recessive genes. He even calls mutation ‘groovy.’

Shaw is revealed to be the sinister mastermind behind so much antagonism and enmity of the age of Russian and American superpower tension. He also happens to have his own superpower: the ability to absorb energy and manipulate it to his will. No wonder a guy like that would want the threat of nuclear war to escalate — more power to him.

Xavier and Lensherr, or Professor X and Magneto as they come to be known, work with the CIA to track down Shaw and stop a Third World War. It’s all very poetic as Magneto has plenty reason to be vengeful but ends up becoming so filled with hate that it’s the only way he can use his powers.

I generally enjoy the X-Men movies more than most other comic book superhero movies. They have a spate of interesting characters, each with an interesting trait that always seems to have an appropriate and undeniable purpose. Also, there’s always an underlying social message of tolerance of the strange and the unknown, respect and co-operation. When Hank McCoy (Nicholas Hoult) finally reveals himself as a mutant to his boss, the mysterious man in the black suit (Oliver Platt), it is so akin to coming out of the closet that he even says, “You didn’t ask, so I didn’t tell.”

Unfortunately, this movie suffers from an unusual case of uneven casting. Here, Kevin Bacon is superlative. When will this guy get an Oscar? He makes the most of his part as the brilliant polyglot and quietly malevolent Shaw. Bacon has been awesome for years and he especially excels as an antagonist.

Oliver Platt is one of my all-time favourite actors so it comes with great pleasure to see him here, although with abbreviated screen time. I could watch this guy alone for two hours straight and be constantly and consistently entertained. Fassbender is also a gem.

I don’t really care for stories that try so earnestly to fill in known details like reverse engineered scripts. Xavier frets about his hair and we already know he goes bald. We learn how he gets paralyzed. There’s even an excruciating line of dialogue about calling his team the X-Men instead of G-Men.

The super-massive problem comes with January Jones. She simply cannot act. Putting her in a movie is like unleashing a black hole of anti-creativity in the middle of a supernova. She just drains all of the enjoyment, fun and interest out of everything. Perhaps that’s her real life superpower.