It was directed by Matthew Vaughn and produced by Bryan Singer, and stars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Rose Byrne, Jennifer Lawrence, January Jones, Oliver Platt, and Kevin Bacon.

Locations included Oxford, the Mojave Desert and Georgia, with soundstage work done in both Pinewood Studios and the 20th Century Fox stages in Los Angeles.

It was a box office success, becoming the seventh highest-grossing in the film series, and received positive reviews from critics and audiences, who praised its acting, screenplay, direction, action sequences, visual effects, and musical score.

In 1944, at the Auschwitz concentration camp, Nazi officer Klaus Schmidt witnesses a young Erik Lehnsherr bending a metal gate with his mind upon being separated from his parents.

MacTaggert, seeking Xavier's advice on mutation, takes him and Raven to the CIA, where they convince Director McCone that mutants exist and that Shaw is a threat.

Xavier uses McCoy's mutant-locating device, Cerebro, to seek and recruit other mutants; Angel Salvadore, Armando Muñoz, Alex Summers, and Sean Cassidy.

Xavier, Lehnsherr, and MacTaggert lead a CIA mission to the Soviet Union to capture Frost and discover Shaw intends to start World War III, triggering mutant ascendency.

With McCoy piloting, the mutants and MacTaggert take a jet to the blockade line, where Xavier uses his telepathy to influence a Soviet sailor to destroy the ship carrying the missiles, and Lehnsherr uses his magnetic power to lift Shaw's submarine from the water, depositing it on land.

Additionally, co-stars include Glenn Morshower as Colonel Hendry, a US Army officer coerced by the Hellfire Club; Matt Craven as CIA Director McCone; Rade Šerbedžija as Russian General.

[60] Schwartz later said that Singer dismissed his work as "he wanted to make a very different kind of movie",[61] with the director instead writing his own treatment which was then developed into a new script by Jamie Moss.

[68][69] Singer set the film in a period where Xavier and Magneto were in their twenties, and seeing that it was during the 1960s, added the Cuban Missile Crisis as a backdrop, considering it would be interesting to "discuss this contemporary concept in a historical context".

[72] The director stated that First Class would become the opportunity to combine many of his dream projects: "I got my cake and ate it, managed to do an X-Men movie, and a Bond thing, and a Frankenheimer political thriller at the same time".

[74] Describing his thought process towards the material, Vaughn said he was motivated by "unfinished business" with Marvel, having been previously involved with the production of both X-Men: The Last Stand[72] and Thor (2011).

[7] Vaughn declared that he was more enthusiastic about First Class than The Last Stand due to not being constrained by the previous installments, and having the opportunity to "start fresh", while "nodding towards" the successful elements from those films.

[7] Vaughn compared First Class to both Batman Begins (2005), which restarted a franchise with an unseen approach,[75] and the 2009 Star Trek film, which paid homage to the original source material while taking it in a new direction with a fresh, young cast.

[77] The film also resurrects a central concept in the comics, the fact that radiation is one of the causes of genetic mutation in the X-Men fictional universe, and incorporates it into the story line.

[78] Production then moved to Pinewood Studios in Iver,[79] and to Georgia in October, including Tybee Island, Thunderbolt, and Savannah,[80] after sites in Louisiana, North Carolina[81] and West Michigan were considered.

[83] Kinberg said the series was a major influence for the way they "did a cool job representing the period, in a way it still felt muscular and action-oriented", and Vaughn added that Magneto was his attempt to recreate Sean Connery's Bond in both style and the "badass, charming, ruthless and sweet" personality.

[8][11] Visual effects supervisor Matt Johnson added that for the lighting of the digital interior of Cerebro, "keeping with the '60s vibe, we put in some old school elements such as lens flare and chromatic aberration and edge fringing.

"[26] The aesthetics of the decade were also invoked by designers Simon Clowes and Kyle Cooper of Prologue Films, who were responsible for the end credits and tried to do something that "could be done with traditional optical".

The credits animation depicts DNA strands through simple geometric shapes, drawing inspiration from both Saul Bass and Maurice Binder's work in the Bond films.

[92] First Class employed 1,150 visual effects shots,[93] which was done by six companies:[26] Rhythm & Hues Studios (R&H) was responsible for Emma Frost, Mystique and Angel, as well as set extensions; Cinesite handled Azazel, the visuals for Cerebro and environment effects; Luma Pictures did Banshee, Havok and Darwin; Moving Picture Company (MPC) did Beast, Riptide, and the scene where Shaw's yacht is destroyed and he escapes in a submarine; Digital Domain created Sebastian Shaw's powers, and Weta Digital was responsible for the climactic battle in Cuba.

The designs were mostly based on real vehicles, with the jet being a modified SR-71 Blackbird, the submarine a combination of various models from the 1940s and 1950s, and replicas of the actual US and USSR fleets in the 1960s—though a few were not in service in 1962.

[15] While in the comics Shaw's absorption power was depicted by having him grow up to ten times his original size, First Class instead does what company Digital Domain called a "kinetic echo", where a digital Kevin Bacon would be rippled, deformed and at times multiplied in repeated "iterations" that appear in a short period, to "see [Shaw] displace and deform in a kinetic and organic way".

[93] The morphed Frost, which the visual effects tried to make look more like a faceted crystal than glass,[93] was rotomated into Jones in the live-action plates while still retaining the actress' eyes and lips.

[26] As the character kept on going in and out of her diamond form, a motion-capture tracking suit could not be employed, so instead the effects team used both gray and chrome balls and a jumpsuit covered in mirrors—which also served as a lighting reference.

The site's critical consensus reads, "With a strong script, stylish direction, and powerful performances from its well-rounded cast, X-Men: First Class is a welcome return to form for the franchise.

[115] Among the major trade publications, Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter described the film as "audacious, confident and fueled by youthful energy", and said that "director Vaughn impressively maintains a strong focus dedicated to clarity and dramatic power ... and orchestrates the mayhem with a laudable coherence, a task made easier by a charging, churning score by Henry Jackman ...".

[116] Justin Chang of Variety said the film "feels swift, sleek and remarkably coherent", and that "the visual effects designed by John Dykstra are smoothly and imaginatively integrated ..."[117] Frank Lovece of Film Journal International lauded "a wickedly smart script with a multilayered theme that ... never loses sight of its ultimate story, and makes each emotional motivation interlock, often shockingly playing for keeps with its characters.

"[119] Peter Howell of the Toronto Star called it "a blockbuster with brains" and said Vaughn "brings similar freshness to this comic creation as he did to Kick-Ass, and manages to do so while hewing to the saga's serious dramatic intent.