 | Meet X-Men's First Class |
Magneto and Professor plan for the future
Controversy surrounds images posted online promoting the upcoming reboot/prequel of the 20th Century Fox X-Men movie series. Set in the 1960's, the film introduces viewers to a younger Magneto and Professor Charles Xavier as they meet and pool their resources in building a future for the mutant race.
(Visit CBR.com for lots more of images of X-Men First Class)
Before Wolverine, Storm, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Rogue and the rest of the mutants familiar to fans of the previous films by Bryan Singer, this retro movie is set in the 1960's and features a new cast of characters familiar to comic book readers but somewhat new to moviegoers. However, these X-Men will be quite different to how we have seen them before. Havok, Beast, Angel Salvadore and Mystique make up the initial team of Xavier's recruits along with Azazel (Nightcrawler's father?), The White Queen and Dr. Moira Mac Taggert.
As many readers may know, I am a big fan of the X-Men. Making the next film a do-over of sorts isn't the best idea in my opinion. To be honest, I fully expected a New Mutants movie featuring Kitty Pryde, Colossus and Ice Man to follow the previous X-Men film, but far too much time passed and apparently all of the hard work that was poured into developing a cohesive universe of the X-Men on screen is getting junked to make way for something new. I know that First Class is posing as a prequel of sorts, but there are too many differences for this to be at all related to the other X-movies including Wolverine. That being said, I do like that MacAvoy (Shameless UK) was picked for the young Professor X and the addition of Kevin Bacon as the Hellfire Club's Sebastian Shaw is interesting. X-Men: First Class has potential, it's just still unclear if it can compete with the other comic book movies also in development.
Director Matthew Vaughn (Snatch, Layer Cake, Neil Gaiman's Stardust, Mark Millar's Kickass) exploded yesterday upon seeing the images popping up online claiming to show the cast in full costume (below) before the files were removed at 20th Century Fox's request ... but MSN published the same images (in hi-res) today as being official. Vaughn has stated that he is a fan of the comic book series and has dedicated himself to faithfully representing the story on screen. The images of the cast in yellow and blue costumes a 'bad Photoshop' and that it is a far cry from what we will see on screen.
If that's the case, why is MSN publishing these very same images crediting 20th Century Fox as the source?
Michael Fassbender stars as Magneto, Rose Byrne plays Dr. Moira MacTaggert, January Jones plays The White Queen Emma Frost, Jason Flemyng plays Azazel
Nicholas Hoult plays Beast, Lucas Till plays Havok, Zoe Kravitz plays Angel Salvadore, Jennifer Lawrence plays Mystique, James McAvoy stars as Professor Charles Xavier
MSN also spoke to actor Fassbender about Magneto, a pivotal character in the X-Men universe:
Michael Fassbender as Magneto (with 'that helmet')
He's such a complex character, really, and the idea of him being a villain is interesting considering his history (Lehnsherr is a Holocaust survivor who lost his family in the camps, and later lost his wife and daughter) ... he's a very solitary individual, and the pain and grief that's gone on even before we meet him in this film is an interesting pool of information to draw from, in coming up with this Machiavellian character for whom the ends justified the means. You can see where he's coming from. Human beings don't have the greatest track record in what they've done throughout history, so his point of view is, "Well, we are the next stage of evolution -- (humans) are to us what Neanderthals were to Homo sapiens."
He's an extremist, and that's always a dangerous place to be. By the time we leave him at the end of this movie, he's become very clear about what he wants and his decisions and his game plan.
There's a scene where they just sort of transformed this hall in London into Buenos Aires Airport, and I just looked around this mock airport and said to myself, "My God, I've just had a feeling of being in the '60s." From the colors to the costume designs to the production design itself, there's a sort of nostalgia in the air when you look around the room. It's just from my own perception of the '60s, and all that came with it in terms of the music and the fashions and so forth, but all of that comes across in the visual references that we all have. All of that is there to encapsulate the feeling of that era, for sure.
As for our costumes, we went back and forth on so many things. We added things that worked in the comics, took them away again, and stripped them down again. ... When it came to the Magneto suit, you know, there's various stages of what has been done with it, but you will have something that is traditional to the comics. There is a helmet (laughs), which is of course essential to keep Charlie-boy out of my head, and the colors are also kept traditional to the comics, that sort of red and purple. I don't know if I'm giving you too much, but I'll say it anyway (laughs).
Whatever the case, we will find out what the X-Men really look like very soon. Until then, we will have to wait until the film opens on June 3rd, 2011. It will be a jam-packed Summer of blockbusters with Thor, Captain America and Green Lantern starring alongside the X-Men reboot. Will this be a Summer of joy or one of infamy?
 | WordPress.com | Thanks for flying with WordPress! |
Trouble clicking? Copy and paste this URL into your browser: http://subscribe.wordpress.com
No comments:
Post a Comment