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The Most X-Cellent Scene in ‘X-Men: First Class’

There’s a team of video essayists dissecting their favorite scenes from the X-Men films. Here’s one of our favorites: a video on why the attack on Division X scene from ‘X-Men: First Class’ exemplifies the “warm house” archetype.
X Men First Class - Young group
Twentieth Century Fox
By  · Published on July 27th, 2020

Welcome to The Queue — your daily distraction of curated video content sourced from across the web. Today, we look at one of a series of video essays on the X-Men franchise with a specific focus on a scene from X-Men: First Class.


Last year, a gaggle of video essayists assembled to dissect their favorite scenes from the Marvel universe. This year, they’re back at it with a different prompt but the same superheroic bent: the excellent (sorry x-cellent) scenes of the X-Men films.

The participating essayists have turned in a veritable bounty of breakdowns on everything from the “War is Coming” warning in X2: X-Men United to Logan’s last run and the perfect introduction to Magneto.

As a jumping-off point to the essay x-ercise, below we have a video from Lessons From the Screenplay on the attack on Division X from X-Men: First Class. The video unpacks how the sequence uses setting to heighten the emotional impact of its midpoint sequence.

Lessons From the Screenplay breaks down the design of the archetypal “warm house,” how it helps establish our young heroes’ roles, and why the scene feels increasingly dramatic as the initial sense of safety is stripped away.

Watch “One X-Cellent Scene — Attack on Division X


Who made this?

The X-Men: First Class scene breakdown above comes courtesy of Lessons From The Screenplay, the consistently insightful video essay channel created and run by Michael Tucker. Lessons From The Screenplay focuses on analyzing movie scripts to determine exactly how films tell effective stories. You can check out Lessons From The Screenplay’s YouTube channel here. And you can follow Tucker on Twitter here.

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Based in the Pacific North West, Meg enjoys long scrambles on cliff faces and cozying up with a good piece of 1960s eurotrash. As a senior contributor at FSR, Meg's objective is to spread the good word about the best of sleaze, genre, and practical effects.