It’s been two years since an X-Men Origins movie was in theaters and five years since Brett Ratner brought us X-Men: The Last Stand. This Friday, X-Men: First Class hits theaters with a wave of positive reviews and a group of mutants making their first appearance in an X-movie. This week’s The Five takes a look at who these new characters are.
Azazel (Jason Felmyng) – A mutant from Biblical times who claims that the Earth and everything on it belongs to him. To save humanity from persecution and death by Azazel, the angels banished him to the Brimstone dimension. Only able to leave this dimension for short amounts of time, he fathered many children throughout the Earth, Nightcrawler being one of them. Using his mental link with his children and bringing them all to one place, Azazel was able to open a portal to the brimstone dimension.
Angel Salvadore (Zoe Kravitz) – Angel was driven out of her home by her abusive stepfather at the age of 14. She slept in the woods where her mutant nature manifested itself in the form of a protective cocoon. She emerged having grown fly-like wings and was found by U-Men, a group of humans who harvest mutant body parts to graft onto themselves. Before they could make Angel their next unwilling donor, a popular X-Man who makes a cameo appearance in First Class rescues her. We’re not going to spoil the surprise, unlike some other sites.
Armando Munoz/Darwin (Edi Gathegi) – Born as a strange looking mutant, Armando was left alone with his mother at the age of 4 after his father rejected and abandoned him. His mother resented Armando for his father’s selfishness and Armando resolved to make her happy again. Four years later, testing revealed that he had genius-level intelligence. His mother enrolled him in Biltmore Academy Boarding School where he was bullied relentlessly based on his appearance, until at the age of 15, his latent mutant ability manifested itself and he fought back.
Janos Quested/Riptide (Alex Gonzalez) – Janos is a member of the Marauders, a team of supervillain assassins brought together by Gambit and employed by X-Men archfiend Mister Sinister, with the purpose of killing other mutants. In First Class, Riptide is a henchmen and member of Sebastian Shaw’s Hellfire Club. His mutant ability in the movie is creating powerful whirlwinds from his hands. In the comics he is also able to spin his body at an incredibly fast rate and releasing sharp calcium growths from his body in the shape of shurikens and spikes. The velocity that comes from him spinning makes them lethal weapons capable of punching through steel.
Alex Summers/Havok (Lucas Till) – Alex is the younger of the two sons of Christopher Summers, a US Air Force Major and test pilot. (In the chronology of First Class he becomes Scott “Cyclops” Summers father). While the family was flying back from a vacation in their vintage airplane, they crashed into a scout ship of the intergalactic Shi’ar Empire, setting the wooden plane ablaze. Their mother pushed the brothers out of the plane with the only available parachute, allowing them to escape capture by the aliens. The boys were hospitalized for injuries. Alex left the hospital after two weeks and was placed in an orphanage in Omaha, Nebraska that was secretly run by master geneticist Mister Sinister. Sinister noticed stirrings of Alex’s mutant ability and incited the local school bully, Vincent, to attack Alex, which resulted in Alex incinerating Vincent.
Other characters that you’ll see in First Class include Oliver Platt as The Man in the Black Suit, Jennifer Lawrence as Raven/Mystique, James McAvoy as Charles Xavier, Michael Fassbender as Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto, Nicholas Hoult as Hank McCoy/Beast, Caleb Landry Jones as Banshee/Sean Cassidy, Kevin Bacon as Sebastian Shaw, Rose Byrne as Moira MacTaggert and January Jones as Emma Frost.
So who's your favorite mutant? Sound off below and also check out our one-on-one interview with Michael Fassbender over on Movies.com!
