Comic book geeks are freaking out this morning over reports that
Matt Vaughn's X-Men: First Class is being setup as a
reboot of the franchise, but I'm here to tell you that there's no need to panic because it's just
a case of ill-conceived journalism. If you read the actual interview the director gave to
IGN, all Vaughn does is compare his movie to J.J. Abrams'
Star Trek with the idea of using fresh faced actors to give a new twist on iconic roles. Going in new direction, back to the beginning, etc. Here's what he said, exactly;
"Obviously couldn't make everyone happy with that one, but he did a pretty good job... He made a fantastically exciting reinvention of that world, with those great characters. And I think there will be comparisons a little bit with X-Men: First Class. It's very similar, in a way. But we're doing some cool stuff in this movie, some really cool stuff that you haven't seen before."
Reinvention is the word he uses - Not reboot. Reinvention fittingly refers to the prequel that he has put together. In a way, I think it
might be something of a reboot because the future of the franchise is likely to spin-off from this movie rather than the original trilogy. Also pay close attention to Vaughn's wording -
"cool stuff you haven't seen before", so those claiming this will be an alternative timeline are barking up the wrong tree. He goes on;
"The story that Bryan Singer came up with is very, very smart... It's very clever when you see how he has integrated the characters into the time period where the film is set. I'll put it that way. I just don't want to give it away. ... It's a very clever way of getting these characters involved in recent history, in recent world events."
As we know... Singer came up with the original treatment for the prequel that is set in the 1960's that was then fleshed out by
Jamie Moss (Street Kings), with the intention of Singer directing. When that became impossible because of his work on
Jack The Giant Killer - Singer hired Matthew Vaughn and he and
Jane Goldman (Kick-Ass, Stardust) have been re-writing the screenplay over the past two months.
One re-write that has been forced upon them came after a recent screening of a big tentpole. Upon seeing
Inception in theatres,
X-Men: First Class director
Matt Vaughn told L.A. Times;
"..my heart sank when I saw that a few of the ideas we had were up . So it's either leave it in and look as if you're copying or change things. We completely ripped out about 12 pages of the script and the storyboards,"
Wow 12 pages - at least 10 minutes of the movie? If the film is the same length as
X-Men 3: The Last Stand, that would be just under 10% of the film. It's being reported that the sequence was a dream-state
"fight involving Professor X (James McAvoy) and some other mutants was to going to be presented with spinning rooms and other physics-bending imagery." Wow that actually sounds like a pretty cool scene and it's a shame Vaughn has felt like he had to cut it.
Besides James McAvoy, the movie has
Michael Fassbender as Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto,
Alice Eve as Emma Frost,
Nicholas Hoult as Beast,
Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique,
Caleb Landry Jones as Banshee,
Edi Gathegi as Darwin,
Lucas Till as Havok, and
Kevin Bacon a yet-to-be-named villain but probably Mr. Sinister. Despite rolling into cinemas on June 11 2011, around 10 months time - Vaughn is still casting his movie and filming has yet to begin.