Superhero Media: X-Men First Class

When considered in retrospectives of the X-Men film series, First Class is typically granted as one of the "good ones", well lauded on its release. I remember walking out of the cinema and hating First Class and was pretty shocked when everyone I spoke to loved it. Admittedly, I was, and still am, annoyed that the proposed X-Men Origins: Magneto story had been compressed into the first act of First Class, but I was just shocked how racist the film was and how many opportunities to be interesting that it missed. Ok, so I'll have to tackle the big one first, how is First Class a racist film? Well, it's not outright, hell, I doubt that it's deliberate, but did you ever notice that by the final act, all of the non-white X-Men have either turned evil or died? That's a bit strange right? Even Darwin, an African American man, who's power is specifically to avoid death by adapting, is killed by Sebastian Shaw, a literal Nazi. How about the first Hispanic mutant in the series, who starts out as an exotic dancer and changes sides because she got bullied once? Again, I don't think these choices were deliberate, but when any thought is put into them, they become pretty obviously uncomfortable. 

The cynic in me would want to say that the only reasons people remember First Class fondly were Jennifer Lawrence in blue body paint, their first exposure to Michael Fassbender and Wolverine saying "fuck". Setting the film in the 1960s should be really clever, especially with the comics having begun in 1963, and Charles Xavier and Magneto where at least partly based on Dr Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X respectively, so there is plenty of ground for interesting stuff to happen. Instead we get a weak-sauce story about the Cuban Missile Crisis so that the characters get to make "Children of the Atom" references. I mean, would it have been all that hard to cut a scene about fighting Russians to have a symposium about minority rights with someone fun doing a cameo as MLK? Hell, why not have Magneto listen to the "Plymouth Rock landed on us" speech and make a comment about "lik[ing] this one"? Writes itself. The first two X-Men films had a strong undercurrent of queer rights, so it's not like it would have been a stretch to introduce a Civil Rights element. 

Is First Class racist then? Well, yes, but mainly in a particular way. First Class is "racist" in the same way Green Book or La La Land are "racist"; namely, in that they ignore racial issues to their detriment. The reasons behind this are pretty obvious, as Hollywood is still heavily focused on "Middle America" white audiences and worry that anything that focuses too much on "Minority Issues" will tank at the box office. Of course, Black Panther has proven that's bullshit, but old habits die hard. The story of the X-Man "Macavoy Timeline" is a little sad, given how many talented actors and filmmakers worked on First Class, Days of Future Past, Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix, that only one of those was really any good and they were overshadowed by the, much better, Logan and Deadpool entries. Still, at least many of the good actors got to go on and be in better films, Fassbender especially, even if he keeps dropping into his natural accent during this film. If you really like First Class, good on you, it's at least well shot and acted, but maybe just think a little bit harder about what's going on next time you watch it.