Kick-Ass Director Confirmed For X-Men: First Class

Matthew Vaughn will direct the X-Men prequel for a 3 June 2011 release

Incredibly, the release date is just little over a year away, so expect some casting news soon. But who is there to cast? The film will allegedly centre on the events that turned Professor Xavier and Magneto into arch enemies, but you have to hope that Vaughn isn’t forced to used CG-botoxed versions of Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen. Great actors though they are, a whole film of their computer-youthed-up faces would be too much (though either or both of them could be used in framing devices).

As for the mutants, well, the movie first class will have to be different to the comics’ first class. In the original X-Men comics, the initial intake of pupils was Cyclops, Marvel Girl (Jean Grey), Beast, Angel and Ice Man, but in the movie timeline, Ice Man and Angel are from a different, younger generation. Cyclops, Beast and Jean Gray could certainly form part of the first intake, and the hint from the first couple of X-Men movies is that Storm has been at the school a long time, so it would be logical to include her. And although Wolverine is the most popular character in the franchise by far, they’d have to perform some major ret-conning to include him (and do we need any more of Wolverine’s origins?). Maybe we’ll get to see Cyclop’s brother, Alex Summers, aka Havok, and his girlfriend, the green-haired Polaris – after all, she was Magneto’s daughter. And she wasn’t his only child. What about Quicksilver and The Scarlet Witch?

Who do you you think will be in the First Class line-up? And who should play them?