X-Men: First Class does something I haven’t seen a superhero movie do before. It’s not just a period piece, that’s unusual enough, but it also places its fantastic characters, Gump-like, in the middle of historical fact. Captain America: The First Avenger, released concurrently, went back in time to place its difficult-to-like protagonist in his proper context, but then wove a fantastical story around him involving ancient Norse artifacts and a guy with no face. First Class not only places its characters in history, it puts them at the center of the darkest, most traumatic events of their time.
With screenings unfolding around the globe, all the buzz on X-Men First Class has been great (100% on Rotten Tomatoes), and last night the film had its world premiere in NYC, with Marvel’s own John Lowe doing some red carpet commentary. Releasing studio Fox has just added to the fun with a new iPad app X-Men EXTRA which plays into the whole conspiracy angle of the film, which follows Xavier and Magneto as young allies in the 60s. As you can see the app has some fun with the historical record, ala Boilerplate, imaging Emma Frost standing beside Jackie Kennedy in a fetching go-go booted ensemble. Check out the byline for another in-joke.
Mutants are among us everyday working under deep cover for branches of the U.S. intelligence community, allegedly linked to history-making events and unexplained activities. Within these pages, X-Men EXTRA attempts to expose those activities.
The influence of the X-Men is felt everywhere: From classified meetings at the White House, to negotiations with all sides of the Cuban missile crisis. And when diplomacy isn’t enough the X-Men aren’t afraid to take action.
X-Men EXTRA Magazine will keep you updated periodically as news breaks. Watch for notifications.
The app includes hidden videos and other Easter eggs among the historical information.
The film opens June 3.
Geoff Boucher got to ramble around the X-MEN: FIRST CLASS set yesterday
, and hear about
Matthew Vaughn’s anxiety about getting it finished, and
James McAvoy’s take on playing Prof. X and so on.
“We’re filming at the moment, we’ve a lot to get done,” said a weary Vaughn, whose credits include memorable but modest-grossing indie fare like “Kick-Ass” and “Layer Cake.” “I’ve never worked under such time pressure. The good thing about the independent world is I never even knew if I was going to get distribution. I’m used to finishing a film and then crossing your fingers that someone is going to like it. This is totally doing it the other way around. We’ve definitely got a release date and we’ve got to make it.”
And some overview from producer Bryan Singer, who directed the first two X-Men films:
The plot of this film is still under wraps, but it presents a world where superpowered mutants are living in secret and don’t face the public scrutiny and prejudice that are central themes in the earlier films, which are primarily set in the modern day. The friendship of future foes Xavier and Lehnsherr is the heart of the film — Singer says the two have a common cause and different approaches and he even used the life trajectories of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X as a sort of shorthand for their veering paths. Despite rumors to the contrary, Vaughn said the movie will be the first X-Men film without the most famous face of the franchise, Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, and key characters such as Cyclops, Storm and Jean Grey give way to new screen arrivals such as Emma Frost (January Jones), Azazel (Jason Flemyng), Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) and Havok (Lucas Till).
And there are PICTURES, which unlike yesterday’s leak, are officially sanctioned.
Here’s the whole cast, looking particularly…not like they are from the 60s.
Kevin Bacon as Sebastian Shaw and January Jones as Emma Frost.
McAvoy as young Xavier and Eric Fassbender as young Magneto.
These stills definitely look like a Marvel movie, although there are no white wifebeaters in sight. Will there be a scene including that “duh-duh, duh-duh, duh-duh” urgent music tha
A few set photos floating around this afternoon are of interest for various reasons.
¶ A fan on the street snapped a shot of a Spider-Man action scene underway in LA.
Can you see what is wrong with this picture?
ANSWER: IT IS BEING SHOT IN LA. Feh. Faw. Their Spring Street is not like OUR Spring Street!
¶ This photo of the cast of X-MEN: FIRST CLASS was first up on MSN, then yanked, and then put up all over, but now people are saying it might be a fake. The still shows, left to right, Magneto (Eric Fassbender), Dr. Moira MacTaggert (Rose Byrne), Emma Frost (January Jones — MEOW), Azazel (Jason Flemyng), Hank McCoy (Nicholas Hoult), Havok (Lucas Till), Angel Salvadore (Zoë Kravitz) Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence)and Professor X (James McAvoy.)
Whew.
Directed by Matthew Vaughn, X-MEN: FIRST CLASS is due in June and deals with the ’60s history of mutants, as Xavier and Lensherr battle for the souls of the young outcasts. It’s notable for the sheer number of youngish fresh –and reasonably priced — talent in the film, such as Jennifer Lawrence, a frequent award nominee this winter for her work in WINTER’S BONE. And yes, January Jones.
Our spider sense says fake. Don’t ask us why…it just does.
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Captain America: The First Avenger, released concurrently, went back in time to place its difficult-to-like protagonist in his proper context
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The writer’s revisionist view of history makes X-Men First Class look like a documentary. Idiotic “serious” analysis of comic book movies like this are what provide endless material for The Big Bang Theory.
Erik’s mother doesn’t have to be a mutant. Perhaps mutantism is a recessive gene and both mother and father had it? I don’t need to have red hair to have red haired children!
Also, Raven is far from a hideous monster…every red blooded man on earth would bed her as is.
Also, this is kinda long winded and overthought.
“X-Men: First Class” was a well made, entertaining movie, but it had anachronisms that detracted from it being a convincing “period piece.” The long hair, sideburns and mini-skirts didn’t become fashionable until a few years later. Crewcuts still ruled in ’62.
But I guess long hair and short skirts are things that say “The Sixties” to people who didn’t live through the decade, or simply don’t know much about it.
Then again, maybe I shouldn’t gripe about a comic book movie, when “Django Unchained” has characters in 1858 using dynamite (which wasn’t invented until after the Civil War) and tossing off modern phrases like “What’s not to like?”
???
Captain America wasn’t a movie for a long long time because the idea of a superhero superpatriot felt repellent to a mass moviegoing audience. The only way to make Captain America work in a 21st-century movie was to place him in his historical context first.
Captain America was a movie serial in the 1940s and a regular film in the early 1990s. And as for your take on the character…have you ever actually read a comic with Captain America in it?
Alcott’s biases are showing in his comments about CA. Also his ignorance.
“Captain America was a movie serial in the 1940s”
Which only supports Alcott’s comment that Captain America only works in his historical context.
“and a regular film in the early 1990s.”
Bringing up that intended-for-theatrical-release-but-went-direct-to-video joke of a movie doesn’t do your argument any favors.
“Which only supports Alcott’s comment that Captain America only works in his historical context.”
In no way does a mention of the 40′s CA serial support alcott’s ridiculous comment. Audiences weren’t clamoring for Iron Man before that came out. By your and alcott’s reasoning that would be because audiences found a super technological hero repellant.
This was a thoughtful essay – nicely done. I appreciated the insights about the film’s references to other films -
Yeah, I agree. This was really insightful criticism. It synthesized and contextualized a lot of things I noticed, but wasn’t consciously aware of. Definitely saw it as a romance. How could you not? And I picked that up in the Ultimate X-Men series too.
Darwin is a fairly new character. His first appearance was in Ed Brubaker’s Deadly Genesis from the mid-00s, and is a period story set at the same time as Giant Size X-Men, where Wolverine, Colossus, Storm, Banshee and Nightcrawler join the team. I’m font of him and was bummed that he bit it.
…have you ever actually read a comic with Captain America in it?
Sure! He’s a perfectly appealing character. But he is, and must be, a man out of time before he can speak to a mass movie-going audience. The idea of a movie studio, post-Vietnam, presenting a feature based on a patriotic superhero would have been commercial suicide, as evidenced by the 1990s fiasco. Marvel’s stroke of genius was to take their true-blue boy-scout superhero and place him in his proper context.