Matthew Vaughn chatted to
EW about 'X-Men: First Class:'
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How would you describe First Class to the uninitiated?
MATTHEW VAUGHN: The best way of describing it is X-Men meets Bond, with a little bit of Thirteen Days thrown in for good measure. It’s set in the ’60s, and I basically molded a young Magneto on a young Sean Connery. He’s the ultimate spy — imagine Bond, but with superpowers.
If Magneto is Bond, then what about Charles Xavier?
You’re seeing Xavier become a professor. For me, Magneto is the good guy in the film, but he’s a sort of a good bad guy. He literally kicks off the movie, and Xavier goes along on the ride trying to figure out what the hell is going on, and trying to persuade Erik that you don’t have to kill everyone.
I know you’re under tight restrictions about what you can reveal regarding the plot, but, well, what else can you say?
In the beginning of the film, no one knows that mutants exist, and all the mutants don’t know that each other exist. They’re all in hiding. Kevin Bacon plays a very megalomaniac mutant [Sebastian Shaw] who decides that he can take over the world and that mutants are the future. Erik and Charles then meet each other and hook up with the CIA to try and prevent World War III. You find out everything about what went on between Erik and Charles.
And there are flashbacks with Erik and Charles as young children?
They’re not flashbacks — we start there. It starts in 1942, and then works its way up to 1962.
Did you have any concerns about how, no matter what you do, you may anger some of the die-hard fans?
Yeah, but I could tell those fans that they’re wrong. One thing about the X-Men world is that, if you know your X-Men universe, every writer reinvented the storyline. I did my research, and none of the histories of the characters make any sense. Each writer just totally changed the history to make their plot work. So I can quite safely say that X-Men has a history of reinventing its history for the sake of the plot.
Is the movie related at all to the First Class comics?
Not really. There are a lot of nods to the X-Men world and the X-Men movies, but it’s definitely its own beast.
Update: James McAvoy Shows Off His Patrick Stewart Impression:
Matthew Vaughn chatted to EW about 'X-Men: First Class:'
