X-Men: First Class has sort of soared below the radar when it comes to this summer's superhero adaptations. With "Thor," "Green Lantern" and "Captain America: The First Avenger" taking most of the headlines, Matthew Vaughn's new installment of the classic Marvel franchise may take people by surprise. And it really does! A Huge Huge surprise indeed!

With "Kick-Ass," Vaughn already showed that he has a keen eye for the comic book genre and with the vintage 1960's setting, in the middle of the most popular worldwide events the human race has ever seen, “First Class” could really be the best superhero film released all summer. Through a story that sets up the the yin-and-yang between the mutant population’s two most influential personalities, on the one hand we’ve got Charles Xavier (played by James McAvoy, in the role Patrick Stewart made famous in original “X-Men” trilogy), who takes his doctorate from Oxford willing to help mutants like himself and his blue-skinned shape-shifter best friend Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) seek acceptance from non-mutant humans. On the other hand is the metal manipulator Erik Lensherr (Michael Fassbender, flawlessly brooding as a young Ian McKellen), who’s bent on razing the former Nazi doctor (Kevin Bacon) , now a businessman named Sebastian Shaw, responsible for murdering his mother in the Warsaw ghetto in 1944. But Sebastian has assembled his team of mutant, including the telepathic Emma Frost (January Jones), and sets out to provoke a U.S.-Soviet nuclear conflict that will thin the ranks of ordinary humans. Recruited by the CIA for a "Division of Mutant Powers" aimed at countering the threat, Xavier and Erik put together a mutant army of their own, mainly stocked with young, unrefined talent — mutants we'll come to know.