X-Men: First Class

X-Men: First Class (2011) is Matthew Vaughn's superhero action film you can watch online on iFILM. This is the story of how two future enemies started out as friends. Charles Xavier can still walk. Erik Lehnsherr is still hunting the man who killed his mother.

The clock winds back to the early sixties, to the brink of nuclear war. A young telepath (James McAvoy) and a man who bends metal with a glance (Michael Fassbender) gather the first team of mutants to stop Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), who is pushing the USSR and the USA toward a strike near Cuba. Jennifer Lawrence appears as Mystique, alongside Nicholas Hoult, Rose Byrne and January Jones.

Vaughn drops his heroes into the Cuban Missile Crisis and the spy movies of the era, and the quarrel between Xavier and Magneto — hide or fight — grips harder than any set piece. The prequel rebooted the whole franchise and won strong reviews. Stream X-Men: First Class (2011) online on iFILM.