History Film / XMenFirstClass

* AdultFear: The movie runs on it.
** The Holocaust. The death of a parent, and the medicalized torture of an innocent child. All within the first 20 minutes. Then, for Erik, knowing that the people that killed your family and ''millions'' of others will go free unless you personally devote your life to hunting them down.
** [[spoiler:A bit of a foregone conclusion, but Charles and Erik's "beach divorce," even though it's only a [[HomoeroticSubtext metaphorical divorce]], (figurative) children having to decide which parent they're siding with in said metaphorical divorce, having a loved one be permanently disabled because of something '''you''' did.]]
** The fear that no one will [[PassFail love you as you really are]]... or even that [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters your entire race/ethnic group will be systematically hunted to extinction]] '''''[[NeverBeHurtAgain again]]'''''.
** For both Charles and Erik, seeing the friend that you loved like a brother become your enemy.

* WarIsHell: The adolescent mutants find out the hard way. They're just [[TotallyRadical stoked]] to discover that other mutants (their own age, at that) exist, and after being approached and brought together by Professor X, Magneto, and the CIA, they decide to act crazy with their powers and party, having been left unsupervised by Xavier, Lehnsherr, and [=MacTaggert=]. [[spoiler:When the Hellfire Club shows up and slaughters the CIA soldiers who were stationed at the facility to guard them, the kids break down emotionally--some of them are even reduced to fearful tears.]]

* NaziGrandpa: Aside from Sebastian Shaw, we see his two old associates here. ThoseTwoGuys (credited as "The Pig Farmer" and "The Tailor") whom Erik killed while he's in Argentina. Possibly the bartender, too, since Erik killed him, too (unless Erik killed him because HeKnowsTooMuch).

* {{Prequel}}: This movie serves as a prequel to the original X-Men trilogy. With the release of ''Days of Future Past'', it became the start of a new series.

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: Deliberately invoked in spirit, especially if you've seen the original trilogy beforehand, which take place more than 40 years later. Among others, there's Xavier sometimes acting like a cocky, womanizing ditz (which is a sharp contrast compared to his ''much'' more subdued and mature persona later on), Magneto not hesitating to use a gun if he likes to (whereas in the previous films, he sneers at firearms with disdain), Mystique is Charles' WomanChild foster sister instead of a lethal FemmeFatale, and Beast is socially awkward with severe self-esteem issues--you wouldn't have expected that the confident politician in ''Film/XMenTheLastStand'' had started his adulthood as an introvert.

** When frustrated, Havok is heard to mutter, "Whatever..."

''X-Men: First Class'' is the [[Film/XMenOriginsWolverine second]] {{prequel}} in the ''Film/XMenFilmSeries'' set in [[TheSixties 1962]] [[AlternateHistory during the]] [[UsefulNotes/HistoryOfTheColdWar Cuban Missile Crisis]].

* {{Futureshadowing}}: Charles Xavier is hilariously fond of the hair he [[BaldOfAwesome loses by the time of the other films]]. See CallForward.

%%** Creator/JenniferLawrence as Raven/Mystique.
%%** Very briefly, an uncredited Rebecca Romijn as Raven/Mystique.

* FingerlessGloves: Charles sports a pair while in Russia. They're probably not keeping warm, but they look pretty damn cool.

* ThoseTwoBadGuys: Azazel and Riptide are thugs that work for Shaw. They have no lines and little development.

* AdaptationOriginConnection: Professor X and Mystique never had a LikeBrotherAndSister connection in the comics. In the movie-verse, Raven has essentially replaced [[Characters/{{Juggernaut}} Cain Marko]] as Xavier's non-blood-related sibling who later becomes his enemy, although Charles' relationship with Raven is a lot more positive during the 18 years that they lived together.

* HollywoodNerd:
** Averted by Charles Xavier, who is stunningly attractive... and is aware of it. In fact, in his first scene as a grown man, he is seen using nerd-talk to pick up coeds in a bar.
** Played straight with Hank [=McCoy=], who is like an introverted version of Charles. All the brilliance, all the attractiveness, but none of his telepathic gift with people.

* StuffedIntoTheFridge: Edie Lehnsherr is murdered by Dr. Klaus Schmidt just so her son Erik would embark on a RoaringRampageOfRevenge against his former captor.

* Russian General (Creator/RadeSerbedgia)

* Russian General (Creator/RadeSherbedgia)

* The Man in Black (Oliver Platt)

* CIA Director [=McCone=] (Matt Craven)
* Janos Quested / Riptide (Alex González)
* Russian General (Rade Sherbedgia)

*** Also when criticizing the first team for making a party and using their powers for playing, something he was doing in the beginning of the film. They were teenagers who just entered a group where none of them would be considered freaks, what did he expect?![[note]] They had broken all the windows, and a statue, though. Also, it's implied they were drunk and Charles had just assured Moira that they were "exceptional" people. [[/note]]

* JustFollowingOrders: The Nazis that Erik confronts trot out this line as an excuse for their actions. Charles later makes the mistake of echoing it while trying to calm Magneto down. Definitely an OhCrap moment for the audience when he says it.

** Professor X in the comics was blond before he lost his hair, but his movie counterpart is a brunet.

[[caption-width-right:350:''[[TagLine Their powers would make them different. But destiny would make them allies.]]''[[note]]From left to right: Azazel, ComicBook/{{Beast}}, ComicBook/EmmaFrost, ComicBook/ProfessorX, ComicBook/{{Magneto}}, ComicBook/{{Mystique}}, and Sebastian Shaw.[[/note]]]]

Before the mind-reading Charles Xavier was known as ComicBook/ProfessorX, he lived a privileged existence as a young brilliant Oxford graduate specialising in genetics, living with his shapeshifting foster sister Raven Darkholme. Before he took the name Magneto, the metal-controlling Erik Lehnsherr was a vengeful young Holocaust survivor bent on hunting down the depraved Nazi doctor who experimented on him and murdered his mother at a concentration camp in 1944, Dr. Klaus Schmidt.

The year is now 1962, and CIA agent ComicBook/MoiraMacTaggert finds that Schmidt, now going by the name Sebastian Shaw, is working alongside mutants in a conspiracy involving the highest levels of the American and Russian governments. When she enlists Dr. Xavier to help her hunt down Shaw, Charles and Erik are unexpectedly drawn together. As they become close friends, the two of them work together to build a team of mutants (some familiar, some new) to stop Shaw and avert the greatest threat to humanity the world has ever known. In the process, a rift between them opens, which begins the eternal war between Magneto's Brotherhood and Professor X's X-Men.

* Charles Xavier / ComicBook/ProfessorX (Creator/JamesMcAvoy)
* Erik Lehnsherr / ComicBook/{{Magneto}} (Creator/MichaelFassbender)

* ComicBook/MoiraMacTaggert (Creator/RoseByrne)
* Raven Darkholme / ComicBook/{{Mystique}} (Creator/JenniferLawrence)
* ComicBook/EmmaFrost (Creator/JanuaryJones)
* Hank [=McCoy=] / ComicBook/{{Beast|Marvel Comics}} (Creator/NicholasHoult)

** In the comics, Sebastian Shaw, is [[http://marvel.wikia.com/File:SHAW.jpg a thuggish-looking, middle-aged businessman]] with a heavy build best described as "gorilla-like." In this film, he's played by a suave Creator/KevinBacon.

** In the comics, Darwin had bulging eyes, slits for a nose, and reptilian grey skin. In the movie, he looks like a normal human. [[http://egotvonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/x-men-first-class-darwin-Edi-Gathegi.jpg?41ed4f Compare the two.]]

* AdaptationDyeJob:
** In the comics, Magneto has been shown to have had white hair for the vast majority of his adult life, presumably as a side-effect of his mutation. He has [[TallDarkAndHandsome dark brown hair]] as a younger man in this movie.
** Professor X in the comics was blond before he lost his hair, but his movie counterpart is a brunet.
* AdaptationOriginConnection: Professor X and Mystique never had a LikeBrotherAndSister connection in the comics. In the movie-verse, Raven has essentially replaced [[ComicBook/JuggernautMarvelComics Cain Marko]] as Xavier's non-blood-related sibling who later becomes his enemy, although Charles' relationship with Raven is a lot more positive during the 18 years that they lived together.

* AlternateCharacterInterpretation. InUniverse. Charles tries to raise Hank's spirits by talking about ''Literature/TheStrangeCaseOfDrJekyllAndMrHyde''. As Charles sees it, the serum didn't divide Jekyll into "good" and "evil," but more "civilized" and "animal," with the "animal" Hyde being Jekyll with confidence and free of inhibitions. Thus Hank shouldn't worry about being a bad guy, but should instead just embrace his newfound self-assurance and freedom. In the novel, Hyde revolts everyone who sees him (not because he's physically ugly--he isn't--but because people can sense something terribly ''wrong'' with him), and amongst other things, tramples a child and later beats an old man to death in a rage. Moreover, neither Jekyll nor Hyde display any remorse, and are only worried about being caught... yeah, stick to the hard sciences, Chuck.
* AlternateHistory: What the ending seems to imply. [[spoiler:The Americans and Soviets drop the Cold War to wage war against mutants.]]
** ''Film/XMenDaysOfFuturePast'' {{Retcon}}s this by implying that the government covered up what happened to avoid alarming the public. [[spoiler:The Cold War still proceeds as it did in real life.]]

** The USN taskforce executing the naval blockade of Cuba is shown as being headed by a 9-gun battleship, and someone refers to it as the USS ''Independence''. In 1962 the USS ''Independence'' was an aircraft carrier CVA-62, commissioned three years previously. The US Navy's 9-gun battleships of the Iowa class were decommissioned in 1958, and briefly recommissioned again in 1968-9, before being decommissioned until they were extensively refit in the early 1980s. Also, the engagement range of an Iowa class battleship was up to 20 miles, and they would seek to engage at no less than six to eight miles. They certainly would not permit themselves to be drawn into the close proximity shown in the movie (a few hundred yards from the Soviet ships) unless they were assured of peaceful intent and maneuvring for a rendezvous to board. It's also doubtful that the draft of the ships depicted would permit them to sail within a mile of the Cuban coast as depicted in the movie.

** A blink-and-you'll-miss-it case: One of the mutants shown during the first test run of Cerebro appears to be a very young ComicBook/{{Storm}}, and another looks like Comicbook/{{Cyclops}}.

* CompositeCharacter: Sebastian Shaw mixes character traits associated with the comics version of that character (a wealthy DiabolicalMastermind with EnergyAbsorption powers) with those associated with fellow X-villain ComicBook/MisterSinister (a [[TheAgeless seemingly-immortal]] EvilutionaryBiologist who experimented on ComicBook/{{Magneto}} in a Nazi concentration camp and believes that mutants are the key to [[TakeOverTheWorld world conquest]]).

** The team's original lineup includes an "Angel," but it's Angel Salvadore (a comparatively minor character from the comics) instead of ComicBook/WarrenWorthingtonIII[[note]]who, going by the movie-verse's timeline, wouldn't have been born at the time the film takes place[[/note]].

* TheUbermensch: Sebastian Shaw's ideal of a mutant is a superior man who rises above the common trash and will change the world.

* DiabolicalMastermind: Sebastian Shaw, who (mutant powers aside) wouldn't be terribly out of place as a ''Film/JamesBond'' villain. He manipulates the world's two superpowers into declaring nuclear war on each other and no one other than the proto X-Men are aware of it. It's actually a very similar plan to the one that the villain uses in ''Film/The Spy Who Loved Me'', right down to the submarines, although with different motivations.

Before the mind-reading Charles Xavier was known as ComicBook/ProfessorX, he lived a privileged existence as a young brilliant Oxford graduate specialising in genetics, living with his shapeshifting foster sister Raven. Before he took the name Magneto, the metal-controlling Erik Lehnsherr was a vengeful young Holocaust survivor bent on hunting down the depraved Nazi doctor who experimented on him and murdered his mother at a concentration camp in 1944, Dr. Klaus Schmidt.

* AndIMustScream: The death of [[spoiler:Sebastian Shaw. He's held immobile while a coin is pushed slowly through his skull. Xavier, who's psychically linked to Shaw in order to hold him immobile, does the screaming instead]].

** The USN taskforce executing the naval blockade of Cuba is shown as being headed by a 9-gun battleship, and someone refers to it as the USS Independence. In 1962 the USS Independence was an aircraft carrier CVA-62, commissioned three years previously. The US Navy's 9-gun battleships of the Iowa class were decommissioned in 1958, and briefly recommissioned again in 1968-9, before being decommissioned until they were extensively refit in the early 1980s. Also, the engagement range of an Iowa class battleship was up to 20 miles, and they would seek to engage at no less than six to eight miles. They certainly would not permit themselves to be drawn into the close proximity shown in the movie (a few hundred yards from the Soviet ships) unless they were assured of peaceful intent and maneuvring for a rendezvous to board. It's also doubtful that the draft of the ships depicted would permit them to sail within a mile of the Cuban coast as depicted in the movie.

* BigFancyHouse: When the team first arrives at Charles' residence, Erik, Sean, Alex, Moira and Hank have to tilt their head back a little to stare at the impressively large Xavier mansion, which practically looks like a small palace. It's even sarcastically lampshaded by Erik: "[[SarcasmMode Honestly Charles, I don't know how you survived, living in such hardship.]]"

* DroppedABridgeOnHim: Oliver Platt's unnamed character is introduced as being a potential "M" for Xavier's Bond, providing a facility, sponsoring the recruitment of the X-Men, protecting them from the rest of the CIA, and above all he comes across as sympathetic to the mutants. Then, not halfway through the film, [[spoiler:the base is attacked and Azazel drops the guy to his death from high in the sky, and that's the end of Mr. Platt's involvement in the film]].

* ChummyCommies: The film depicts USSR and USA as NotSoDifferent, since both are being fooled by BigBad Sebastian Shaw and both believe they're being threatened by the other. Also, even if Azazel, the only (supposedly) Communist mutant is an evil henchman, he's more on PragmaticVillainy and is definitively better than Shaw.

* DirtyCommunists: Subverted. Although many UsefulNotes/ColdWar cliches are in place, Russians are not portrayed as intrinsically evil or [[TakeOverTheWorld bent on world domination]]. They plan to install their missiles in Cuba not as a part of some EvilPlan to destroy capitalism, but as a counterweight to US missiles in Turkey (not to mention that [[DivideAndConquer both countries are being bullied and manipulated]] by the Hellfire Club). Most importantly, the final act shows that Soviet sailors are NotSoDifferent from their American counterparts.

* NeverMyFault: Erik blames Moira for [[spoiler:Xavier getting shot, even though she was aiming for Erik who deflected the bullet. Xavier then tells Erik that it wasn't her fault, but his]]. He quickly relents. In general, it's only perfectly rational that he's dedicated his life to hunting down and brutally killing a series of individuals, to the point that he not only believes that these men are irredeemable, but that ALL humans are essentially just as bad, and [[AllOfTheOtherReindeer hate mutants for what they are, secretly or openly]]. He's certainly not to blame for both his own descent into madness, nor single-handedly almost causing WWIII after ''just'' having prevented it. Given exactly [[UsefulNotes/NaziGermany WHO]] is responsible for his descent is a bit more valid of a FreudianExcuse than usual, even if it ends up with him being NotSoDifferent, up to the point of ''agreeing'' with the primary target of his hunt.

* NotSoDifferent:

** In a good way, the American and Soviet sailors. Every scene with the American navy is immediately mirrored by the Soviet navy (or vice versa), showing that they had the same reaction or feelings. Both have a strong sense of honour and discipline and both are reluctant to shoot first and provoke World War III. The most obvious may be their ItHasBeenAnHonor moment [[spoiler:where Magneto fires their missiles back at them]].

* TokenMotivationalNemesis: Magneto did away with his NotSoDifferent nemesis Sebastian Shaw in this movie, but never mentioned him in the TwentyMinutesIntoTheFuture trilogy that preceded it. We're talking about the man who killed Magneto's mother and whose role Magneto assumed after killing him. Of course, the writers of the original trilogy couldn't have predicted the future (in fact, Shaw doesn't look very dead, or old enough to have been an adult in TheForties, in his television appearance in X2.) [[spoiler:It doesn't matter in any case, as ''Days of Future Past'' removes the original trilogy from existence.]]

* FamousLastWords:
** "Alles ist in Ordnung!"[[note]]"Everything is fine!"[[/note]] [[spoiler:Edie Eisenhardt to her son Erik, trying to calm him down as she is about to be executed.]]
** "You're one of them?!" [[spoiler:Bob Hendry, after trying to blow up Shaw with a grenade and finding that Shaw can easily absorb the energy. Shaw then uses this energy to kill him.]]
** "Alex! Do it!" [[spoiler:Darwin, shielding Angel Dust right before Alex shoots Shaw with an energy beam. Shaw absorbs the energy and then gives it to Darwin, and Darwin fails to adapt fast enough to survive.]]
** "I don't want to hurt you, Erik. I never did. I want to help you. This is our time. Our age. We are the future of the human race. You and me, son. This world could be ours." [[spoiler:Sebastian Shaw, before Erik gets his anti-telepath helmet off. Once Charles paralyzes him, Erik telekinetically moves a coin through his skull.]]

[[caption-width-right:350:''[[TagLine Their powers would make them different. But destiny would make them allies.]]'']]

* Armando Muñoz / Darwin (Edi Gathegi)
* Sean Cassidy / Banshee (Caleb Landry Jones)

* ComicBook/EmmaFrost (January Jones)

* AdaptationalWimp: In the comics and original trilogy of movies, Magneto is depicted as letting his PowersDoTheFighting. As this is set at a point before he has full control of his powers, he doesn't do things like float in midair while hurling cars at people with a flick of his wrist.

* AdaptationOriginConnection: Professor X and Mystique never had a LikeBrotherAndSister connection in the comics. In the movie-verse, Raven has essentially replaced Cain Marko as Xavier's non-blood-related sibling who later becomes his enemy, although Charles' relationship with Raven is a lot more positive during the 18 years that they lived together.

* ApeShallNeverKillApe: Sebastian Shaw lightly scolds Emma, after she punts Erik off their yacht, that, "We don't hurt our own kind." [[spoiler:Later he kills Darwin, and his team later go all-out to hurt/kill the X-Men; and of course, he beats up Erik on the sub, while trying to convince him to change sides.]]

** The film is definitely marketed as a prequel to the original trilogy, but the timeline used in the film is very wonky. ''First Class'' takes place in 1962, which would put Xavier and Magneto in their 70s in the first movie (Creator/PatrickStewart was only 60 when the first film was released, and Creator/IanMckellen was around the same age). It's best not to think about Beast's age.

* CompositeCharacter: Sebastian Shaw mixes character traits associated with the comics version of that character (a wealthy DiabolicalMastermind with EnergyAbsorption powers) with those associated with fellow X-villain Mr. Sinister (a [[TheAgeless seemingly-immortal]] EvilutionaryBiologist who experimented on ComicBook/{{Magneto}} in a Nazi concentration camp and believes that mutants are the key to [[TakeOverTheWorld world conquest]]).

* DefenceMechanismSuperpower: Darwin's power is "adpating to survive." If he goes underwater, he develops gills. If he's smashed by something, he develops impenetrable skin.

* DefrostingIceKing: In a PowerOfFriendship example, the combination of Charles' sensitivity and intelligence is able to "thaw" Erik's cold heart, making him the first and only person in the original timeline[[note]]Lehnsherr has a [[Film/XMenApocalypse wife and daughter]] only in the AlternateTimeline[[/note]] Erik has loved since the death of the latter's family during UsefulNotes/WorldWarII.

** Emma Frost seduces big wigs at Shaw's behalf.

* FutureShadowing: Charles Xavier is hilariously fond of the hair he [[BaldOfAwesome loses by the time of the other films]].

* {{Jerkass}}: Although the CIA staff in general acts like jerks most of the time, the worst is William Stryker Sr. What makes him most deserving of this trope is that John [=McCone=], himself sexist and a hot headed jerk, calls out against Stryker twice, first in regards to his decision to keep Emma Frost detained (since the law requires that they hand her over), and the second when Stryker decides to have the American and Soviet navies [[TheresNoKillLikeOverkill bombard]] the Cuban shore to eliminate the mutants specifically because one of their human agents was present as well. Both times, he dismissed him, stating that he's not handing her over because the law doesn't apply to mutants, and in the latter case insensitively stated that the agent was "collateral damage."

** Bonus points for his mutation being relatively minor, before it becomes much more pronounced after taking the serum and also that he uses it on himself as the first test subject, without even considering that it might turn out wrong. It's not like there's a big potential pool of test subjects for something like this, but given his state of mind, would he care?

* TheMountainsOfIllinois: Erik seeks the guy who killed his mom at the concentration camp in [[ArgentinaIsNaziland Argentina]]. The name given is Villa Gessell, but while the movie shows a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bariloche Bariloche]]-like mountain city, [[http://static1.cuantarazon.com/crs/2011/08/CR_307493_peliculas_millonarias.jpg it is actually a beach.]]

** January Jones of ''Series/MadMen'' fame as Emma Frost, who tricks a Russian general into thinking he's having sex with her, and remains in her lingerie afterwards.
** Rose Byrne as an FBI agent going undercover ''in lingerie''.
** Zoë Kravitz as Angel works as a stripper prior to joining the X-Men and she needs her back open to use her wings.

** The team's original lineup includes an "Angel," but it's Angel Salvadore (a comparatively minor character from the comics) instead of Warren Worthington[[note]]who, going by the movie-verse's timeline, wouldn't have been born at the time the film takes place[[/note]].

* NotEvenBotheringWithTheAccent: Creator/MichaelFassbender and Kevin Bacon make no attempt to make their characters sound German when they speak English. Possibly [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] in that both are established [[CunningLinguist Cunning Linguists]].

* TrailersAlwaysLie: The TV spots imply Charles's pointing a gun at Erik as a threat; it's from a scene where they're training together.

* WallOfWeapons(meta version): Young Erik Lehnsherr meets Dr. Klaus Schmidt in his [[WickedCultured wood-paneled office filled with books and antiques]], then a reverse shot reveals the opposite wall is made of glass, leading into a white-painted surgery lined with sinister instruments. Unfortunately, Erik's powers aren't controlled enough to use these as actual weapons; they all get thrown harmlessly against the glass.