X-Men: First Class

This week's movie rental was X-Men: First Class ...

a 2011 American superhero film, based on the X-Men characters appearing in Marvel Comics. It is the fifth installment in the X-Men film series. It is both a prequel to the original trilogy and a soft-reboot of the franchise .... The story is set primarily in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and focuses on the relationship between Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Erik Lehnsherr / Magneto (Michael Fassbender), and the origin of their groups—the X-Men and the Brotherhood of Mutants, respectively. The film also stars Rose Byrne, Jennifer Lawrence, January Jones, Nicholas Hoult, Oliver Platt, Jason Flemyng, Lucas Till, Edi Gathegi, and Kevin Bacon.

I somehow missed this film in the series, recently watching X-Men: Days of Future Past which comes later chronologically, so now that I've seen this, the other film makes more sense. It is set in the 60s, when Charles Xavier/Professor X (Patrick Stewart) and Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto (Ian McKellen) are young men (played respectively by James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender) - it portrays how they met, became friends, and how they recruited other mutants to be on eventually opposing teams. There were some fun scenes of the recruitment and training process, including one in which Charles and Eric try to ask Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) to join them - they don't get very far ;) ...



And here's Richard Roper's review - he gave the movie an A+ ...