Whenever I think of a movie franchise “rebooting,” my first knee-jerk reaction is some incoherent—and often profane—gripe about Hollywood not having any original ideas, a reaction that is, ironically, not terribly unique. Actually thinking about the matter forces one to consider the Batman reboot, which went rather well, and the James Bond reboot, which went stunningly well (for the first movie, at least). Not a half-bad track record for the institution of the reboot. X-Men: First Class appears, from this quite cool trailer, to continue that trend nicely.
20th Century Fox, in its release, said “X-Men: First Class charts the epic beginning of the X-Men saga, and reveals a secret history of famous global events.” It also seems to be about James McAvoy being very sensitive as Charles Xavier and Michael Fassbender being absolutely awesome as Erik Lehnsherr (small sample size, but that bit where he crunches the dude’s chest with his mind gets a solid thumbs-up). The supporting cast features a number of solid pros as well (Kevin Bacon, January Jones, Jennifer Lawrence, Oliver Platt, Ray Wise, et al).
Matthew Vaughn demonstrated his ability to direct comic-book action in Kick-Ass, and did a fairly good, much more PG-13, job with Stardust (however frustrating some of his departures from Neil Gaiman’s book were to fans, the movie itself was a fine piece of craft)…so now the test is, can he do both at once? The X-Men: First Class trailer is an indication that that answer may very well be yes.
Danny Bowes is a playwright, filmmaker and blogger. He is also a contributor to nytheatre.com and Premiere.com.
