X-Men: First Class

[Venneh]

Not Safe For Work

Proof that January Jones is more than qualified to play Emma Frost.

[prez]

Wow. I certainly have never seen her like that before.

[JackFetch]

Hey folks, Harry here with a great update on X-MEN: FIRST CLASS that just came from Producer: Bryan Singer - who tells me he's been working on X-MEN: FIRST CLASS for over a year now and with the looming August 31st, filming date approaching - he wanted to clarify some of what it is they're doing.

First off -

the film takes place in the 1960's. John F Kennedy is the President of the United States. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X are on TV doing marches. There is a spirit of a hopeful future that was prevalent in that time. We will see how Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr met - and how they dreamt of a future with Mutant & Human kind. They're going to be in their late twenties. Xavier - as played by James McAvoy will not be in his wheelchair to begin the film - but we will see how he wound up in a wheelchair. I asked if McAvoy would have a nice shiny chrome dome - and folks. We're going to see Professor X when he still had hair. We'll see McAvoy and Fassbender's Magneto formulate what it is they are attempting by creating the X-MEN. Now Bryan wanted us to know this is not the conventional FIRST CLASS comic - but rather a new beginning for X-MEN. Set in the 60s - Vaughn is technologically inspired by JAMES BOND's tech of the time. The costumes will be far more comic bookish than we've seen before - and while Scott and Jean aren't here - Cyclops' brother Alex Summers aka Havoc will be, as played by Lucas Till. With January Jones and Kevin Bacon playing Emma Frost and Sebastian Shaw - we will be getting the HELLFIRE CLUB. I commented that the HELLFIRE CLUB has always felt like something that it would be wrong to modernize, as it felt as though it were something specific to the swinging Hefner era of the 60s... and Bryan said that's exactly why they're making use of the HELLFIRE CLUB... the dress and the costumes associated with that glorious period of the X-MEN... belong in the 60s. I asked if Kevin Bacon would be sporting that little ponytail with the ribbon - Bryan laughed and said, "We'll see". In regards to the cast, Bryan was especially excited to land Nicholas Hoult as Hank McCoy/Beast. Nicholas was set for FURY ROAD, but their start date shifted which opened up his availability for FIRST CLASS. Also - Rose Byrne is playing Moira MacTaggert, I liked her in KNOWING. And I think she's fairly perfect for Moira. The cast list over on IMDB is correct (with the exception of the Rosamund Pike rumor). Looks like filming will begin with Xavier at Oxford University in the 60s. And Bryan is excited that the film is going to have a much more international feel than the prior X-MEN movies. They'll be shooting in England & the United States - and they'll be representing other locales around the globe as well, but would only tell me that Russia (aka The Soviet Union... CCCP) will be amongst them. He doesn't want to show all the cards just yet. But the International flavor will give the film a more James Bond vibe... I get the idea that this is going to be something quite special. How can I say that based on a quick conversation with Bryan? Well... folks, this is the first time that we're going to get a silver age MARVEL story. That's incredibly exciting to me. Hearing Bryan actually saying that the costumes will be far more reflective of what we saw in the comics - well that is exciting. But more than that... I just can't wait to see young vital versions of Xavier and Magneto played by excellent actors in their prime. But more so... This is the time for Matthew Vaughn to shine. I loved KICK ASS, but it didn't have the namebrand of X-MEN or the scope that those stories have. Here, everything that Vaughn has can be put on display. Having Vaughn work in a James Bond-esque period - that was the period that the X-MEN first came to life. There's potential for something amazing. There are characters that we're not being told about though. Bryan said so. And we can all speculate as to who they are. We know we're going to have Darwin, Young Raven Darkholme, Banshee, Havok, lil Mystique, Azazel, Emma Frost, Beast, Xavier, Magneto and a female Angel. So... who's missing? Well - I'm kinda hoping for Donald Pierce and Harry Leland - myself. How about you? Oh, I just remembered, I asked Singer when we can expect our first look at some of the costumes and the look they're going for and he told me to expect something in about a month, if not sooner. So seems like we'll begin to have a clue pretty soon.

http://aintitcool.com/node/46217

None of this fits with the established time line of the other movies.

[KnightWing]

That all sounds great except for (A) the lack of Scott and Jean, and (B) Xavier being the students' teacher when he's in his 20s? What?

Also, Havok joining the team before Scott? Ehhhhhh.....

[ShaunKL]

I think it would be best to watch this Star Trek XI-style. Completely forget all canon with everything and watch it as it happens.

[JackFetch]

I think it would be best to watch this Star Trek XI-style. Completely forget all canon with everything and watch it as it happens.

If they would just come out and say it's a reboot we can do that.

[KnightWing]

The lack of Scott, Jean, and Warren Worthington (and the young age of Xavier & Magneto) kinda point to it being somewhat in the same continuity.

[Koete]

I honestly don't give a shit if it's in continuity; I just want a good X-Men film.

[Molly]

I honestly don't give a shit if it's in continuity; I just want a good X-Men film.

X-2

[JackFetch]

The lack of Scott, Jean, and Warren Worthington (and the young age of Xavier & Magneto) kinda point to it being somewhat in the same continuity.

Scott's brother joining the team in the 60s and Emma being older than she is in the 70s points to it not being in continuity. Here's what someone else pointed out:

The first x-men was set slighty in the future (so perhaps 2001 or 2002) wolverine wasn't clear on its timeline but the majority of it seemed to take place in the 80's (or late 70's). But emma frost was like 18 in wolverine - now she's older in a story that is set before those events??

Plus X-men opened with an 11-12 year old magneto in a concentration camp during WW2... so if this is early 60's then he should be in his 30's not 20's,

Plus beast is in this and he was in X-3, so was he supposed to be like 80 in x-3?

Mra Targart was also in x-3 but if she's in this and is the same age as Xaviar, then she should have been in her 60's in x-3 but she appeared to be 40's at the oldest.

Oh, and Angel is not that Angel, it's Angel Salvatore aka Tempest. I will quit bitching about that now.

[KnightWing]

The first x-men was set slighty in the future (so perhaps 2001 or 2002) wolverine wasn't clear on its timeline but the majority of it seemed to take place in the 80's (or late 70's). But emma frost was like 18 in wolverine - now she's older in a story that is set before those events??

Plus X-men opened with an 11-12 year old magneto in a concentration camp during WW2... so if this is early 60's then he should be in his 30's not 20's,

Plus beast is in this and he was in X-3, so was he supposed to be like 80 in x-3?

Mra Targart was also in x-3 but if she's in this and is the same age as Xaviar, then she should have been in her 60's in x-3 but she appeared to be 40's at the oldest.

Emma was never actually named in Wolverine; we just kind of assumed it was her since she had similar powers.

The Singer interview says that Magneto is in his "late 20s." So if this is about 20 years after WWII, and Magneto was 9 or 10 there, he could be 29 in First Class.

If Beast is a teenager in this film, that'd make him about 50 at the time of X3. I think that fits.

The Moira thing is also a little up in the air, like Emma. We kind of assume that that character was Moira, but we don't really know. And hey, maybe she, being a sci-fi super-scientist, took an anti-aging serum or something? It's totally possible that it's the same character.

I think if the movie were a reboot, they'd be using Scott and Jean. The fact that they're not seems to indicate that they want to leave those characters alone since having them be teens in the 60s would royally screw over all the previous continuity.

[JackFetch]

Emma was never actually named in Wolverine; we just kind of assumed it was her since she had similar powers.

She is listed as Emma in the credits and she turns diamond. She is definitely Emma Frost. If they try to say it's not her, than they are just covering for bad writing.

[KnightWing]

If they try to say it's not her, than they are just covering for bad writing.

Exactly. She never should have been there in the first place, and now they're going to have to cover for it.

[Koete]

I wasn't particularly anticipating this film before, but I gotta say, getting a Marvel Comics film actually set in the 1960s has me really excited.

[Stavros]

If they're making a Deadpool film with Ryan Reynolds and another planned Wolverine film then this has to be in some sort of loose continuity, you can't confuse the audience like that. That Wolverine movie really screwed the pooch on this whole franchise, it tried to be in continuity but the result felt like the film makers hadn't bothered to pay too much attention to the original trilogy.

I don't mind if they change the overall history for this if they like. If this is set in the 60's (period X-men film=awesome) then Havok could always be Scott's father in this version. If they're recasting Emma then they could mess around with a Black Canary-style legacy split, one classic version and one for the modern era. Honestly you see bigger discrepancies all the time in comics when switching continuities.

[JackFetch]

[slothian]

Were that Rosamund Pike, those pics would be hot. Just saying.

[Venneh]

Oh, I dunno, if they get JJ into the Emma outfits that I've seen, I'll be verreh happy. But it seems to be going well so far.

[KnightWing]

Why does she remind me of a whack-a-mole mallet?

[Guest]

In Soviet Russia, hat wears you.

[JackFetch]

She looks straight out of Austin Powers. Groovy baby

[MaxPower]

In Soviet Russia, hat wears you.

Classic

[JackFetch]

Jennifer Lawrence revealed to Hollywood Elsewhere just how much we'll be seeing her as Mystique in Matthew Vaughn's X-Men: First Class:

Only 10% of her screen time will be as Mystique, she said. It takes X-Men: First Class makeup artists about six hours to transform her into Mystique with the blue skins and the scales, she added. (She has a nickname for the process or the makeup or whatever -- "Mystink.") I asked if official photos have been taken, and she said the idea was to keep her appearance under wraps until just before the film's release.

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=71113#ixzz13PtoXlr0

[ShaunKL]

Lots of rumors and spy images have been floating around this prequel to the X-Men movie franchise, set to hit theaters June 3, 2011, but we've finally got the first official word from Fox as to what this film is all about.

Some things about Matthew Vaughn's flick were easy to put together, just based on the casting: With James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender playing Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr, respectively, it was clear that we'd be seeing Professor X and Magneto before they were bitter enemies. And if you followed comics at all, you'd know that Jeff Parker's First Class book was, as the title implies, about Xavier's first batch of students.

But now Fox dispels some of the conjecture about the film itself:

X-Men: First Class charts the epic beginning of the X-Men saga, and reveals a secret history of famous global events. Before mutants had revealed themselves to the world, and before Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr took the names Professor X and Magneto, they were two young men discovering their powers for the first time. Not archenemies, they were instead at first the closest of friends, working together with other Mutants (some familiar, some new), to stop Armageddon. In the process, a grave rift between them opened, which began the eternal war between Magneto's Brotherhood and Professor X's X-Men.

Some online scuttlebutt has it that the Armageddon spoken of is an actual character and not the end of the world. But, as Slashfilm points out, Armageddon was partially created by Jean Grey, who's not in the movie. And it kinda makes sense for the Hellfire Club—led by Kevin Bacon's Sebastian Shaw—to try and crack the world apart.

So, yeah, mutants vs. something that prompts the end of days? Done and done.

From Blastr

[You Know Who]

How many people here think that they're milking this cow too much and that its teats went dry a long time ago?