Head Of The Class

The sub-genre of comic book adaptations isn't exclusively composed of superhero-related material. With films like Ghost World (2001), Road to Perdition (2002), American Splendor (2003), and A History of Violence (2005), "comic book movies" aren't just about costumed crime fighters. That said, when fans debate about which comic book film deserves the title of Best Comic Book Film, they're typically talking about movies where people wear tights and fly around.

Once upon a time, that was a very slim group of movies to discuss. You had the Superman and Batman franchises, a smattering of pulp or pulp-inspired adaptations - like The Rocketeer (1991), The Shadow (1994) and The Phantom (1996) - and a mostly embarrassing handful of Marvel Comics films.

All that changed in 2000 with X-Men. Marvel finally got in the game for real with Blade (1998) but it was X-Men that really put the Marvel movie brand on the map. Director Bryan Singer, with the help of producer (and X-Men fan) Tom DeSanto, made X-Men into a major evolutionary leap for comic book adaptations. Even if it wasn't quite a classic, it was definitely an important building block whose success would make other, better films possible.

Whereas fans once had to squint to see the faint remnants of their favorite comic characters in the movies that bore their namesakes, fidelity to the source material is now almost a given and X-Men helped that happen. In fact, we've become so accustomed to comic book adaptations taking their cues directly from the books that it's no longer a novelty when filmmakers get it right. But there's getting it right and then there's really nailing it and X-Men: First Class is an example of the latter.

In telling the tale of how two young leaders emerged from a budding young age of mutants in the 1960s - telepath Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and master of magnetism Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender) - X-Men: First Class combines elements of history, social allegory, coming of age drama, James Bond-ish action, splashy superheroics, and revolutionary ideology. And yet, incredibly, it never seems to be biting off more than it can chew. The script by director Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass) and writers Jane Goldman, Ashley Edward Miller, and Zack Stentz is swift-moving and uncluttered, despite its multitude of mutants and its political milieu.

As for how well First Class functions as a prequel to the X-Men trilogy and X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), I couldn't say as it's been awhile since I've watched any of those films but the film begins as Singer's original X-Men did, with young Erik being separated from his parents in a concentration camp. Only now instead of the film jumping ahead to the present day, we see how the young boy's uncanny ability to bend metal with his mind catches the attention of scientist Dr. Schmidt (Kevin Bacon). Thanks to Schmidt's sadism, Erik's talents are tragically brought further to the surface.

By the '60s, Erik has become a hunter of Nazi war criminals, travelling the world and using his mutant talent to execute the guilty for their crimes. At the same time, Charles Xavier is covertly enjoying the fruits of his telepathic gifts until CIA agent Moria MacTaggert (Rose Byrne) approaches him with the prospect of a world-changing assignment - rooting out a mutant who's intent on manipulating global nuclear tensions. This mutant is Sebastian Shaw, formerly Dr. Schmidt, and before long, both Xavier and Erik are working together with the American government to bring an opposing force of mutants to bear against Shaw and his so-called Hellfire Club.

McAvoy and Fassbender prove to be brilliantly cast, bringing their character's conflict to life and handily overcoming any comparisons to Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan, their mutual predecessors. The rest of the cast is sharp as well, although characters like Darwin (Edi Gathegi) understandably get a lot less screen time than Xavier and Erik do. Some viewers may be put off that characters like Emma Frost (January Jones) are essentially bit players here but it didn't bother me.

I'm not as fluent in the X-books as I am with other corners of the Marvel U so while I'm sure there's nitpicks to be made with continuity, I'm not aware of them. But even if I were, I probably wouldn't care. As a Spidey fanatic, I could make a case that the movie series should've had Betty Brant as Peter's first love, should have not introduced MJ until at least the third film, and should have kept the mystery of who the Green Goblin was running for a few films before his identity became a shocking reveal to Peter but I don't think there has to be such a painstaking attempt to emulate the books. As long as the essential spirit of the material is up on the screen along with most of the relevant character info, I'm good. To my eyes, First Class gets the X-Men right and I love that it pops off the screen with such Silver Age swagger.

The two Singer-directed X-films were smart but in terms of supplying comic book excitment, both left me kind of flat. I liked them but couldn't say I loved them. Brett Ratner's X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) and Gavin Hood's Wolverine were more appealingly "comic book" in their action but both were sadly knuckleheaded in other respects. First Class, in contrast, brings both the brains and the fun.

What works on a comic book page doesn't always carry over into film (or so we've been told) but yet Vaughn laces his film with touches that Singer (who is involved here as an executive producer) surely wouldn't have - such having Shaw tooling around in a submarine HQ that would've fit right into a Connery-era Bond movie. First Class is larger than life in a way that the previous X-films - and many modern comic book films in general - have been afraid to be. It lets its freak flag fly with real confidence, even as its characters struggle with their outsider status. Further, I'd like to say thanks to Vaughn for going against the grain and staging his action scenes with a clarity that's rare in modern movies. When several mutants are engaged in an ariel battle towards the end of First Class, it was thrilling to actually be able to follow what was going on (I also believe there was some old-school wirework involved in this scene, although I might be mistaken).

Extra kudos for the sly Superman II (1980) shout-out and for the very apt appearance of one of mutant-kind's finest, Michael Ironside, who played Darryl Revok in David Cronenberg's X-Men-ish classic Scanners (1981).

Based on the early photos from the film, I had serious doubts that First Class would be anything but an embarrassment (maybe not as bad as Wolverine but still an embarrassment). I like to think that I'm not normally susceptible to pre-judging but, to me, First Class looked truly awful. What a surprise, then, to find that this is one of the best films of its kind. Actually, strike that, it's just a great film period. Now if only First Class can become the hit that it deserves to be, hopefully we can get a '70s-set follow-up, with Dazzler lighting up the disco floor.

One Fan Can Make A Difference

Dreaming of being a superhero is pretty standard for young comic book buffs. After all, if you didn't enjoy fantasize about being a larger than life crime fighter, why were you even reading these books to begin with? As someone who was addicted to comics as a kid, I wore more than my fair share of superhero-themed Underoos and I'd be embarrassed to admit how old I was before I finally came to terms with the fact that I was never going to be the bearer of a real Green Lantern power ring. I knew that I'd never be Superman because I was pretty sure I hadn't been born on Krypton but it was permissible in my far-flung imaginings to think that becoming an approximate version of one of my favorite superheroes wasn't out of the question.

Getting older, though, those goofy dreams of adopting a superhero persona for real fade away - or, for some, become relegated to live action role-playing games. In the new movie Kick-Ass, however, Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson) - the adolescent comic book fan at the heart of the story - wonders why no one has ever taken the obvious-but-bold leap to become a real-life costumed hero. When he decides to be the first, he receives a brutal beating at the hands of some ordinary thugs - a beating that lands him in the hospital with metal plates now installed in his body and some serious nerve damage to boot. This, after all, is what happens when someone really tries to fight the kind of battles that comic book heroes have been fighting for years. What happens - especially if you're a scrawny adolescent kid - is that you get your ass handed to you.

After that savage first beating, the "this is how it would really be" portion of Kick-Ass is over. One swift alley fight is all the reality that this movie can tolerate. What follows is every bit as fanciful as anything found in the Marvel or DC pantheon. Forget radioactive spiders, forget alien power rings - in the real world, what really would've happened after Dave's first try at being a superhero is that he either would've died (or been permanently crippled) thanks to his injuries or else he would have pulled through intact but would never want to be Kick-Ass again. Instead, Dave recovers and actually feels motivated to continue with his one-man war on crime (he compares the new steel in his body to Wolverine's adamantium skeleton, natch). More incredible than that, he soon finds out that he isn't the only costumed avenger in the city of NY and that these other heroes are hardcore.

Operating on a level that Dave can't hope to touch, the mysterious duo of Big Daddy (Nicholas Cage, turning in one of his best performances - his Adam West-style delivery while in costume is pure gold) and Hit-Girl (Chloë Grace Moretz, soon to be seen again in the Let The Right One In remake) are a sociopathic father-daughter team who have a special hate-on for the city's biggest gangster, Frank D'Amico (Mark Strong). These two new heroes are so ruthless, well-trained, and well-armed that they pose a serious threat to D'Amico. Dave, on the other hand, muddles through his new hobby as a self-made superhero on behalf of his pie-eyed dream of helping others. Despite his lack of ability, Dave really is hero material - mostly for the fact that he cares. He doesn't need any Uncle Ben-style shock to teach him a lesson - he already thinks it's a good idea to help his fellow man.

As an adaptation, the movie's script - written by Jane Goldman along with director Matthew Vaughn - represents a vast improvement over comic scribe Mark Millar's smug, cynical source material (material redeemed on the comic page by some of legendary artist John Romita Jr.'s best work - one of the high points of the film, in fact, is a segment featuring J.R. Jr.'s art in limited animation). However, in making Dave a much more altruistic, morally grounded person than his unpleasant comic book counterpart, it also opens up a hole in the narrative. It was easy to accept the troll-like Dave of the comic going along with Big Daddy and Hit-Girl's wholesale slaughter of criminals but in the movie, one has to wonder if this is really what Dave had in mind when he dreamed about being a superhero.

First of all, it'd be more correct to call the self-styled costumed characters of Kick-Ass vigilantes rather than superheroes. If you'll let me get comic book geeky for a minute, there's an important difference. Superheroes, traditionally, don't kill. It's what separates them from vigilantes. The Punisher, for example, is a vigilante while Spider-Man and Captain America are not. Sure, you could say that anyone operating outside the law is, by definition, a vigilante. But to be a superhero involves a code of conduct. Batman might strike fear into the hearts of criminals but he never kills. A criminal might die in the midst of a battle with the Cowled Crusader, but never as the direct result of Batman's actions. The day Batman kills is the day he stops being Batman.

Given that, Dave's attitude towards murder is something that should've been addressed. We see that he's taken aback by Big Daddy and Hit-Girl's actions but he never suggests that killing shouldn't be a part of a hero's repertoire. Now, had he expressed a moral issue with using lethal force, Kick-Ass might've had his naivete thrown back in his face and he might've had to accept through bitter experience that a one-man war on crime can't be fought according to gentleman's rules but that should've been incorporated into his character's arc, seeing him go from an idealistic fanboy to a hardened superhero in the real world. The comics that inspired Dave ultimately prove useless to him (on the other hand, they prove to be good research for D'Amico's son Chris, played by Christopher Mintz-Plasse) and it might've been interesting to see him abandon his interest in comics as his illusions are stripped away.

Directed with plenty of panache by Matthew Vaughn and stocked with vivid performances, it's easy to get swept up in Kick-Ass but at the same time, I couldn't help but feel slightly put off by the movie's break-out character, Hit-Girl. While I didn't want any harm to come to the character (honestly, who wants to see a little girl get hurt?), and I liked Moretz's performance, the whole concept of the character rubbed me the wrong way. It's a kid with a foul-mouth, a blasé, too cool for school attitude when it comes to taking lives and who has advanced fighting skills that make most ninjas look as fleet as wounded elephants. Dave and his relatable insecurities was interesting to me whereas Hit-Girl was just a cartoon character seemingly created whole cloth from a checklist of what fanboys would find cool. Long before the climax, the whole movie has gone the cartoon route.

As cartoons go, however, Kick-Ass does a mostly super job. It's fun, on a certain kneejerk level. But like its pretend heroes, it's not quite bulletproof.