Once he is a grown man, we find Erik (Michael Fassbender) working his way through a hit-list of German war-criminals to get to Dr. Shaw. Shaw, however, is under investigation by a C.I.A. Agent, Moira MacTaggert (Rose Byrne, Bridesmaids), who disguises herself as a female "entertainer" and sneaks into the Hellfire Club to see what Shaw is up to. What she sees, however, is Shaw, Emma Frost (January Jones, Mad Men), Azazel (Jason Flemyng) and Riptide (Álex González) intimidating a colonel into locating nuclear warheads in Turkey, a ploy that could eventually result in war.
Observing the strangely-powered Shaw and friends leads MacTaggert to seek out an expert on genetic mutation-based powers, the aforementioned rich boy turned playboy, Charles Xavier (James McAvoy, The Duchess). Using his mind-reading powers as parlor tricks, he starts to try his charming act on her, but when he peeks on her memories and sees what she had seen, he offers to help her, if he can.
The two joining forces leads to a raid on Shaw, who is partying on his yacht. However, it becomes quite a showdown when Erik shows up as well, with revenge on his mind. Shaw escapes, but Eric throws his hat into the ring and joins Xavier in his endeavor to find their mutant brothers.
With the funding of the government and Cerebro, the invention of Hank McCoy (Nicholas Hoult), a talented inventor who just happens to be a mutant, working for the C.I.A., Xavier is able to amplify his psychic abilities and isolate and locate other mutants. With this information, he and Erik begin meeting and recruiting these other mutants to assist them in learning to control their powers. They build a small, motley crew of mutants: Hank McCoy (Nicholas Hoult) a.k.a. Beast, Sean Cassidy (Caleb Landry Jones) a.k.a. Banshee, Armando Muñoz (Edi Gathegi) a.k.a Darwin, Alex Summers (Lucas Till) a.k.a Havok, Angel Salvadore (Zoë Kravitz), and, of course, Xavier a.k.a. Professor X, Erik Lehnsherr a.k.a. Magneto and Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) a.k.a. Mystique.
Naturally, Shaw wants the newly discovered young mutants to join him or die, but for the most part, they defy him and thus, the X-Men are formed. Soon, they realize that Shaw's plan is to spark an international thermonuclear war, intending the radiation to kill off the humans, but only make the mutants stronger. This puts our newly formed X-Men in their first active mission as a team - attempting to avert the beginning of WWIII. It plays out a bit like a chess game, with Dr. Shaw taking over one of the Russian ships and moving it full-tilt towards the "line-in-the-sand" that would trigger the war.
The final showdown finds the X-Men triumphing over Shaw and averting the war, and we see how Xavier loses his ability to walk. However, having killed Dr. Shaw in the submarine, Magneto essentially takes over the Shaw's minions as he begins his "Brotherhood" group of mutants.
I'm not the world's biggest X-Men fan from back in the day (I'm more of a web-head, myself), but I've greatly enjoyed the X-Men movies leading up to this one and I have to say, for plot, filming and fan service (there are specific scenes in place just for you, but you'll have to discover them on your own), X-Men: First Class lived up to its name and is my new favorite X-Men movie. It helps to explain how Magneto came to be as hate-driven as he is and where his mutants-versus-humans philosophy originated. It also gives a glimpse at a young, ambulatory Xavier before he had such compunction against forcing his will on others.
Newcomers and die-hard fans alike will likely enjoy the Cerebro: Mutant Tracker feature, which features an interactive menu similar to the affect shown when Xavier uses Cerebro in the movies and provides access to clips and profiles for a large number of mutants, from the various X-Men movies, not just from X-Men: First Class. Further, this feature is Blu-ray enhanced, to make even more mutant profiles available.
There's also deleted and extended scenes and a Composer's Isolated score for film and music buffs, respectively. Quite frankly, I preferred all of the deleted and extended scenes, and wish they had been used in the movie. There are a lot of different features on how the movie was made, covering things from the wardrobe to the filming of the crashing jet. Some of the CG elements were absolutely amazing, while the completely impractical things that were done as practicals were even more astounding. It's amazing to see the processes that went into the makeup jobs for Mystique and Beast, but the "dogfight" scene where Angel Salvadore is chasing Banshee as he's flying and carrying Havok, take the cake. When you try to guess how one might go about filming a super-hero chase scene involving three people flying unassisted over the ocean in and around ships, you probably would never think, "Oh, let's just actually fly them around and film it," but they did just that. You have stunt men hanging from helicopters, being swung around ships over the ocean in superhero costumes, with small drag chutes trailing behind them to keep them pointed the right way. Un. be. lievable.
Finally, for those movie goers who are always on the go, there is pocket BLU, which allows you to take a digital copy with you on your phone, and the Digital Copy disc, which allows you to take it with you on portable media players.
Whether you're a long time fan or a complete newcomer, X-Men: First Class is an amazing film that gets superhero movie-making right. I highly recommend it.
