Does X-Men: First Class Have Any Class?
Having managed to run the most popular X-Men characters into the ground in a mere four films (“mere” given the sheer volume of characters to make use of), Fox’s X-Men: First Class is starting to look like one of those movies that’s the fourth or fifth flick in a popular movie franchise, where the movie gets released directly to DVD and stars an entirely different (and cheaper) cast than the original.
So let’s take a look at what we’ve got. The current producer for the film is Bryan Singer, who did the good X-Men (the first) and the semi-okay one (X2). The man directed(/wrote/produced) stinkeroo Superman Returns. So where we started at a grade “0” I’m going to drop this out to a “-20.”
Matthew Vaughn, who helmed Kick-Ass reasonably well but rather missed the mark in the 2007 Neil Gaiman novel adaptation Stardust, is set to helm the movie. In spite of producing Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, I’m forced to drop us another 20 points. -40.
Word’s out that Michael Fassbender is in talks to take over Magneto from the esteemed Sir Ian McKellen. I don’t know what it means to bend fasses (and it sounds vaguely dirty), but the guy was in Inglorious Bastards, 300, and Band of Brothers. So we know he can do military. I also understand he went on a crash diet to lose weight for a flick called Hunger. Still and all, it’s tough to follow up McKellen. The Fass, as I’m going to call him from now on, nudges us back up to a -20.
And then we have Professor X. Everyone knew that no one could play ol’ Xavier better than Sir Patrick Stewart (woh was knighted this very year!). But young Xavier is being handed off to one James McAvoy. Now, I don’t care that he was in Atonement (I never liked the book myself)– the man played the most boring superhero-ish-guy ever in Wanted. NO THANK YOU! Minus fifty for a total of -70.
Writer Jamie Moss, whose only past credit I can find includes the widely-panned Keanu Reeves vehicle Street Kings (which even Hugh Laurie couldn’t save), drops us down to an even -100 points.
It’ll take some pretty amazing casting and word-of-mouth to make me optimistic about X-Men: First Class again.
Gia Manry is a professional writer specializing in geek culture. She currently writes primarily for Anime News Network, but also likes being followed on Twitter. She can be contacted via her website.