X-Men: First Class is OK. Not great, not the best X-Men ever; OK. Coming after the franchise double-tap of The Last Stand and Wolverine though, that was something of a miracle. Dispensing the extraneous numbers of auxiliary mutants (something that likewise happened in the comics after House Of M) and getting rid of the current narrative thread (which wasn't convoluted per se, just rather bland), Matthew Vaughn returned the franchise to its roots. We were in 1963, the same year the mutants first debuted and seeing the older generation all meet for the first time. What makes the film work is the genius recasting of the two central characters; Michael Fassbender is astounding as a man so driven by revenge that he winds up in increasingly dark places and James MacAvoy has hints of Prof. X without losing his sense of young, smartly biding his time rather than going full-Stewart. It was Jennifer Lawrence's casting that was the real coup though - an unexpected star, she gave a human side to the mutant-and-proud Mystique and totally realigned the series' focus going forward. More of those three, looking at their development together and as a trio, unencumbered by outside forces, would have been great. But instead we have to work in the Cuba Missile Crisis and an evil plot by Sebastian Shaw and a bunch of other characters that mean the "friendship" that so dominated Professor X and Magneto's discussions in the original movies amounts to little more than an extended vacation together.
