X-Men: First Class (Matthew Vaughn, 2011)

The fifth instalment in the X-Men franchise rewinds the action back to 1962 and the environment of the Cuban missile crisis. This brings benefits and drawbacks: it's fun to piece together the seeds of later character developments and how their actions fit in with officially recorded history, and it does not require an anorak's knowledge of the comic series to manage either aspect. On the other hand, with most of the heroes now teens, there's always the risk of going all Glee with the banter and homilies.
In respect to the latter, Vaughn was a reassuring choice of director, with his previous in handling juvenile action leads without the customary cutesiness, i.e. Kick-Ass, and duly the cheese is mostly kept to a minimum. The adult casting is also as strong as you might expect from the series, with Michael Fassbender's Magneto a more complex character than it's reasonable to expect of a popcorn product. Naturally, subservience to the franchise is still inescapable, and the continuity dots with the other parts have to be joined up as best managed, but it breezes along surprisingly lightly for all that burden.

5/10