No love for the boy genius

“In my Dr Who spud days, I remember going to a Dr Who convention and Peter Davison was there. They screened Earthshock which had never been shown on American television. When Adric died, the audience stood up and cheered. He was not a well liked character at the time.”

http://amplify.com/u/bna8z

Spider-Man’s new costume from the Marc Webb film

The image below was just released showing the first idea of what Spider-Man’s costume will look like in the upcoming film.

The suit is being worn by a stunt man, not actor Andrew Garfield and therefore has less details but it can now be confirmed that the Spider-Man of the new film will have web shooters (glimpsed by many eagle-eyed fans on the previous image)! It is still unclear if the ‘shoes and other odd details in the costumed seen below will be seen in the costume worn by Garfield or if these are details that are only seen in the stunt costume.

Make sure to visit MTV’s SplashPage for more images and analysis of the costume.

The 2012 Spider-Man film will be a re-imagining of the character developing Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s Marvel creation from the ground up. Set during Peter Parker’s high school days, the movie is a total reboot that Sony hopes will spawn several sequels. Starring Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker, Rhys Ifans as the Lizard, Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy, Denis Leary as Captain Stacy, Martin Sheen as Uncle Ben and Sally Field as Aunt May. Rumored to be heavily influenced by the Ultimate Spider-Man comic book series by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley, the Marc Webb movie will take the character familiar to millions and modernize him for a modern audience.

More as it comes.

See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/bna6j

Trouble for Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men?

Trouble for Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men? “The movie is still shooting in LA while Vaughn is somewhere else editing. They’re shooting at the Culver City Studios for the next couple of weeks. The official story is that they’re just shooting pick ups but the reality is …that hot mess of a film has not been coming together. Vaughn and company ran from location to location but never got the right stuff, or stuff that worked. That’s what’s happening right now – while he’s cutting the film somebody else is shooting literally six weeks – almost a whole film – worth of stuff.”Via CBR.com: http://preview.tinyurl.com/6b3pa8h http://amplify.com/u/bn9w6

Meet X-Men’s First Class

Magneto and Professor plan for the future

Controversy surrounds images posted online promoting the upcoming reboot/prequel of the 20th Century Fox X-Men movie series. Set in the 1960′s, the film introduces viewers to a younger Magneto and Professor Charles Xavier as they meet and pool their resources in building a future for the mutant race.

(Visit CBR.com for lots more of images of X-Men First Class)

Before Wolverine, Storm, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Rogue and the rest of the mutants familiar to fans of the previous films by Bryan Singer, this retro movie is set in the 1960′s and features a new cast of characters familiar to comic book readers but somewhat new to moviegoers. However, these X-Men will be quite different to how we have seen them before. Havok, Beast, Angel Salvadore and Mystique make up the initial team of Xavier’s recruits along with Azazel (Nightcrawler’s father?), The White Queen and Dr. Moira Mac Taggert.

As many readers may know, I am a big fan of the X-Men. Making the next film a do-over of sorts isn’t the best idea in my opinion. To be honest, I fully expected a New Mutants movie featuring Kitty Pryde, Colossus and Ice Man to follow the previous X-Men film, but far too much time passed and apparently all of the hard work that was poured into developing a cohesive universe of the X-Men on screen is getting junked to make way for something new. I know that First Class is posing as a prequel of sorts, but there are too many differences for this to be at all related to the other X-movies including Wolverine. That being said, I do like that MacAvoy (Shameless UK) was picked for the young Professor X and the addition of Kevin Bacon as the Hellfire Club’s Sebastian Shaw is interesting. X-Men: First Class has potential, it’s just still unclear if it can compete with the other comic book movies also in development.

Director Matthew Vaughn (Snatch, Layer Cake, Neil Gaiman’s Stardust, Mark Millar’s Kickass) exploded yesterday upon seeing the images popping up online claiming to show the cast in full costume (below) before the files were removed at 20th Century Fox’s request … but MSN published the same images (in hi-res) today as being official. Vaughn has stated that he is a fan of the comic book series and has dedicated himself to faithfully representing the story on screen. The images of the cast in yellow and blue costumes a ‘bad Photoshop’ and that it is a far cry from what we will see on screen.

If that’s the case, why is MSN publishing these very same images crediting 20th Century Fox as the source?

Michael Fassbender stars as Magneto, Rose Byrne plays Dr. Moira MacTaggert, January Jones plays The White Queen Emma Frost, Jason Flemyng plays Azazel

Nicholas Hoult plays Beast, Lucas Till plays Havok, Zoe Kravitz plays Angel Salvadore, Jennifer Lawrence plays Mystique, James McAvoy stars as Professor Charles Xavier

MSN also spoke to actor Michael Fassbender about Magneto, a pivotal character in the X-Men universe:

Michael Fassbender as Magneto (with 'that helmet')

“He’s such a complex character, really, and the idea of him being a villain is interesting considering his history (Lehnsherr is a Holocaust survivor who lost his family in the camps, and later lost his wife and daughter) … he’s a very solitary individual, and the pain and grief that’s gone on even before we meet him in this film is an interesting pool of information to draw from, in coming up with this Machiavellian character for whom the ends justified the means. You can see where he’s coming from. Human beings don’t have the greatest track record in what they’ve done throughout history, so his point of view is, “Well, we are the next stage of evolution — (humans) are to us what Neanderthals were to Homo sapiens.”

“He’s an extremist, and that’s always a dangerous place to be. By the time we leave him at the end of this movie, he’s become very clear about what he wants and his decisions and his game plan.

“There’s a scene where they just sort of transformed this hall in London into Buenos Aires Airport, and I just looked around this mock airport and said to myself, “My God, I’ve just had a feeling of being in the ’60s.” From the colors to the costume designs to the production design itself, there’s a sort of nostalgia in the air when you look around the room. It’s just from my own perception of the ’60s, and all that came with it in terms of the music and the fashions and so forth, but all of that comes across in the visual references that we all have. All of that is there to encapsulate the feeling of that era, for sure.

“As for our costumes, we went back and forth on so many things. We added things that worked in the comics, took them away again, and stripped them down again. … When it came to the Magneto suit, you know, there’s various stages of what has been done with it, but you will have something that is traditional to the comics. There is a helmet (laughs), which is of course essential to keep Charlie-boy out of my head, and the colors are also kept traditional to the comics, that sort of red and purple. I don’t know if I’m giving you too much, but I’ll say it anyway (laughs).”

James MacAvoy as Professor X

James MacAvoy spoke to the LA Times regarding his portrayal of Professor Charles Xavier, the importance of the previous films and the influence of Patrick Stewart’s performance:

“This isn’t a reboot, so I’m not replacing anyone, in which case you might want to try to be as different as possible and stay away from what had been done before,” McAvoy said on Monday during a break from a rescue scene that required water-tank work. “This is a prequel, so I’m the same character, just younger, but the challenge for me – and for Michael — is to show the same person in a different place in their life; to show someone before they’re this bad guy, before they’re this saint. Charles wasn’t always a … monk, this selfless, sexless monk that he becomes.”

Images have leaked of the X-Men’s signature plane the Blackbird crashed on an island. Rumor has also circulated that the plot of the film revolves around a threat similar to the Cuban Missile Crisis combined with the revelation of the mutants living amongst humanity.

 

Blackbird image via: http://www.comicbookmovie.com

Such a large cast and the details previously mentioned suggest to me that X-Men First Class may be an adaptation of Giant Size X-Men #1 in which the team battles an island-sized mutant called Krakoa.

Whatever the case regarding the make-up, costume design, and production woes… we will find out what the X-Men really look like very soon. Until then, we will have to wait until the film opens on June 3rd, 2011. It will be a jam-packed Summer of blockbusters with Thor, Captain America and Green Lantern starring alongside the X-Men reboot. Will this be a Summer of joy or one of infamy?