X-MEN: FIRST CLASS Blu-Ray Review
By: Rama
Ramascreen delivers another homerun with his review of X-MEN: FIRST CLASS Blu-Ray Edition. Please make sure to follow him on Facebook and Twitter.
One of the most-well reviewed films of 2011 has arrived in Blu-ray. X-MEN: FIRST CLASS, in my humble opinion, is also one of the best superhero movies ever made. Everything about this movie is just right. The perfect mix of drama and action complimented by Oscar-worthy performances from some of its key cast members.
The film is also one of this year’s pleasant surprises, considering the production was ridiculously fast for a big budget summer movie, many even thought it was doomed from the start because the adaptation significantly went astray from the comic book that it’s based on. But the film worked, it surprisingly worked. This blu-ray shows you why and big chunk of it is because the story and the characters went back to the franchise’s basic, which is about control and self acceptance…
Before Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr took the names Professor X and Magneto, they were two young men discovering their powers for the first time. Before they were archenemies, they were closest of friends, working together, with other Mutants (some familiar, some new), to stop the greatest threat the world has ever known. In the process, a rift between them opened, which began the eternal war between Magneto’s Brotherhood and Professor X’s X-MEN
What annoyed me about X-Men: The Last Stand was that it was practically just showing off how many mutants it could jampack itself with, not to mention it was yet again about Logan and Jean Grey.
I didn’t grow up reading the comic books but the movies’ emphasis on those two characters got really old after a while. When talks of Fox’s developing X-MEN: FIRST CLASS movie circulated around the web, my first thought was ‘o man, are they still going to try this again after the lackluster X-Men Origins: Wolverine?!’
Part of the special features in the blu-ray described its early initiation in that the idea was to focus on X-Men when they were in high school, so they were going for Twilight-esque approach and boy how horrible would that have been huh?!
But I believe 2 of the many reasons why X-MEN: FIRST CLASS was successful were.. co-writer/director Matthew Vaughn and his collaborator, screenwriter Jane Goldman, basically the team behind Kick-Ass adaptation which I genuinely enjoyed.
They rewrote the script by Stentz and Miller with story by Singer and Turner and added more quality and more attention on the rise and the downfall of the friendship between Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr, plus the tie in with the ’60s historical setting.
Unlike X3 which had a bunch of mutants that made appearances for no reason at all, Vaughn and Goldman added in mutants that were not in the comic book, they even dared to mess with the material’s continuity and the characters’ genealogy relation for the sake of the story.
They were looking at the bigger picture, they wanted mutants that could be useful to the story, keeping in mind that although X-Men franchise is based on Marvel’s comic books, if you noticed, none of them were completely faithful to the material but…the movies are faithful to each other to a certain degree, they wanted to keep a certain level of continuity with the previous movies, which is why X-MEN: FIRST CLASS features interesting cameos by Hugh Jackman and Rebecca Romijn.
So if there are 2 people that we need to thank for the end result of X-MEN: FIRST CLASS, those 2 people would be Vaughn and Goldman.
The special features in the blu-ray are excellent, each segment gives you an inside tour of the making of this film down to the very last detail.
My favorite is ‘Children of the atom’ which shows the technical aspects which include pre-production, VFX, the production design. Those things are interesting to me because in case you’re wonderin’.. the motivation behind that ’60s stylish retro look for the interior and the costumes and even the main title design is the early James Bond movies (Dr. No, Thunderball, Goldfinger), apparently Vaughn is a big fan of that whole look and his crew understand how to incorporate it and combine it with X-MEN: FIRST CLASS world.
The film’s VFX supervisor was none other than the great John Dykstra, I’m sure there was a certain sense of awe that filled the room anytime he stepped in and did his work.
I hope the score by composer Henry Jackman get recognized, or at least considered, when the next award season comes around because I think it’s a strong enough contender. There’s a segment where he explained how he and Vaughn decided on which music would be appropriate for Magneto’s theme.
I kid you not there are so many extra features in this blu-ray, you will not feel like you didn’t get your money’s worth. The cerebro mutant tracker allows you to reconnect with previous characters, so it’s more or less nostalgic. The deleted scenes are just as interesting because if you recalled, the part where Magneto made a Soviet soldier stab himself with a knife was in the trailer but it wasn’t part of the theatrical cut.
The blu-ray packet also comes with a digital copy that gives you the option of watching the film through various media players.
Special features on the X-MEN: FIRST CLASS Blu-ray include:
● 10 Marvel “X-Men” Digital Comics with exclusive “X-Men: First Class” Backstory Comic
● More than two hours of never-before-seen extras, including:
○ Cerebro Mutant Tracker: The complete interactive Mutant Database with interactive videos giving fans the ability to learn about their favorite mutants in the X-Men film franchise
○ Children of the Atom: An eight-part behind-the-scenes featurette, charting the film from pre-production through post-production, including visual effects techniques and cataloguing “X-Men” transformations through prosthetic make up and costume design
○ “X” Marks the Spot: An interactive feature allowing viewers the opportunity to learn more about specific scenes with talent interviews and behind-the-scenes footage
○ Extended and Deleted Scenes
○ BD-Live Portal with additional Cerebro Mutant Tracker profiles
○ Composer’s Isolated Score
○ Theatrical Trailer
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