X- Men: First Class; Prequel Outshines Franchise

It's hard not to love a sequel that is done well and has a legitimate reason for being. To often, sequels are made for no other reason than money and it cheapens the franchise. Not so with X -Men: First Class, the whole production is first class, from the casting to the script.

We start off in WWII Germany and a young Erik Lehnsherr (before he was Magneto). While being taken to a concentration camp, Erik is separated from his parents and his anger causes him to use his powers. Being able to bend metal is appealing to the Nazi's and so he is forced to make use of his powers for their benefit. In the process his mother is murdered and his desire for revenge sets the stage for his life focus.

Elsewhere, young Charles Xavier (before being dubbed Professor X), is in college and trying to finish his thesis on genetic mutation. It's this level of expertise on the subject that leads a CIA agent to seek him out for consulting on behavior she has recently seen but can't explain.

Kevin Bacon is protagonist Sebastin Shaw and almost steals the show (hard to do with McAvoy and Belcher in top form). You can see the glee Bacon is having in playing the bad guy, an energy absorber assisted by telepath Emma Frost (January Jones).

It's a quick history lesson in origins and as such we are given alot of background on many of the characters we've already becoming familiar with in the first four movies. Even a few of our favorites make brief cameo appearances (namely Hugh Jackman's Wolverine and Rebecca Romijn's Mystique).

Both leads are so well portrayed by McAvoy and Belcher that you soon forget about the portrayls by Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan. For a comic book novice like myself, a movie like this is like a secret decoder key, making it easier for me to understand how it all came together. I also liked learning things like where Magneto's helmet originated or why Mystique was ... well, Mystique.

I loved this movie from beginning to end and would recommend it highly whether or not you'd already seen the previous X-Men movies.

4 out of 5 (run and see!!)