Cary Fukunaga, the Hollywood Wunderkind best known for his 2009 breakthrough with the central American family drama Sin Nombre, here adapts Charlotte Brontë’s paean to plain girls everywhere, lending Jane Eyre a distinctly handsome feel. The production, starring two of contemporary cinema’s ones to watch with Mia Wasikowska as the titular governess and ubiquitous Irishman Michael Fassbender as the roguish Mr. Rochester, is a beautifully crafted period drama, with a fine eye for detail and costume, and more moors than Heathcliff could hope to mope around.
But for all its finery, there is an undeniable lack of dramatic tension to proceedings. The stewing romance between Jane, a mousy waif whose keen intellect belies a life of strict educational reform courtesy of a hard-hearted aunt (Sally Hawkins, playing keenly against type), and Rochester gets suddenly thrust upon the audience without so much as a coy smile or hanky’s wave. In their place, we get some supposedly pithy banter that mostly feels like two adults, a misanthropic bastard and a petticoated outcast who clings to her sense of ordinariness like some sort of spite-driven shield to fight off would-be naysayers, who suddenly decide one day that they both enjoy hating everybody else, so why not spend the rest of their days despising the dolts around them together?
It’s been over a decade since Bryan Singer’s X-Men effectively relaunched the cinematic superhero as a viable movie commodity. While remaining loyal to 40 years of increasingly outlandish source material, Singer centred his mutants around the usual suspects of the Marvel universe, following the popular kids of the Xavier School for Gifted Youngstersand their suped-up adventures in upstate New York. With some slick CGI, Halle Berry in skintight leather and two gravitas growling British thesps to lend it some weight, his solidly entertaining origins flick unleashed a new wave of spandex-clad superstars upon an audience of financially flush Generation X-ers ready to relive Saturday morning cartoons on the silver screen. 10 years and three sequels later, the X-Men franchise was looking distinctly X-pired, after the critical acclaim of number two (X2) was tarnished by a disappointing third (The Last Stand) and ill-advised spinoff for Hugh Jackman’s rascally poster-boy, X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
But after the success of JJ Abrams retro Star Trek redux, that boldly went back to the drawing board where 10 films and 30 years of cinema had gone before, there was new-found interest in Stan Lee’s wunderkinder. As mutants by their very nature are adaptations of the norm, we get X-Men: First Class, a genetic blend of prequel, retrograde revision and swingin’ 60s origins tale, under the eyes of Matthew Vaughn’s direction. Vaughn is very much in vogue after striking big with the last year’s riotous Kick Ass, and together with writing sidekick Jane Goldman, knows something about bringing a fresh appeal to the very crowded market of costumed heroes. And while their efforts fly high, they never quite reach first class.
Magneto was pretty adamant that paper did in fact cover rock
Their story involves the beginnings of the bumpy relationship between the two leaders of mutantkind, James McAvoy’s mind-bending Charles Xavier and Michael Fassbender’s metal-morphing Erik Lehnsherr. We begin with a young Erik displaying his metalwork in a concentration camp in Poland, watched by Kevin Bacon’s sadistic Sebastian Shaw, a mutant who’ll go to any length to develop the boy’s powers, and finding rage to be a potent trigger. On the other side of the world, Charles is living an affluent life in the family mansion, but already showing altruistic intent as he welcomes the shapeshifting Raven into his home. A speedy cut to 20 years later and the grown-up Chuck is finishing his PhD in groovy Oxford, chatting up girls, chug chug chugging pints between punts and ignoring Jennifer Lawrence’s filled-out Raven’s romantic pinings. Erik is still disgruntled with his lot and jetsetting around the globe, on the hunt for Shaw and taking out Nazis with his linguistic prowess, metallic abilities and impeccably tailored suits.
