Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, Zoë Kravitz & Matthew Vaughn Discuss X-MEN FIRST CLASS

some new stuff, some old stuff:

http://www.dailyblam.com/news/2011/03/12/michael-fassbender-james-mcavoy-zo%C3%AB-kravitz-and-matthew-vaughn-discuss-x-men-first-clas

By Kimberly Houston
Published: March 12, 2011 - 4:22pm

The upcoming X-Men movie prequel from the director of Kick Ass is scheduled to be released theatrically this summer in a year inundated by big-budget films.

X-Men First Class charts the epic beginning of the X-Men saga, and reveals a secret history of famous global events. Before mutants had revealed themselves to the world, and before Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr took the names Professor X and Magneto, they were two young men discovering their powers for the first time. Not archenemies, they were instead at first the closest of friends, working together with other Mutants (some familiar, some new), to stop Armageddon. In the process, a grave rift between them opened, which began the eternal war between Magneto's Brotherhood and Professor X's X-Men.

The film is being helmed by director Matthew Vaughn, who is known by comic fans for bringing Kick Ass to the silver screen. Vaughn explains that the film will be very different from the previous X-Men films, "What I'm doing no one has done in superhero films. It's James Bond, it's a political thriller and it's an X-Men movie. It's not like the other X-Men movies which I think is important. I think they need to sort of take on a new... you know, what Batman Begins did for all those Batman movies? We bloody well need it. I'm not saying it's going to be as good as Batman Begins, but it's the same sort of attitude."

The film's plot won't be the only re-imagined factor, Wanted star James McAvoy will take on the role of Charles Xavier which was portrayed four times on film by Patrick Stewart. McAvoy explained a bit about the project: "It's set in a completely different time and you are also taking these people to a much earlier point in their personal development as well as their physical and super development. "What's fun is you get to figure out who they were. For me Charles is a monk. He's like a selfless, egoless, almost sexless force for the betterment of humanity and mortality. And getting to kind of go 'Well, he's got to be different from that' is quite fun because the complete opposite is an ego-fuelled, sexed-up, self-serving dude. And we've not gone too far from that... he's definitely got an ego and he's definitely got a sex drive as well." Word is that Xavier will be involved with a young mutant in the film as well as Dr. Moira MacTaggert, played by Rose Byrne.

Michael Fassbender will play Erik Lehnsherr -- known to comic fans as Magneto -- and X-Men: First Calss will attempt to flesh out his complicated relationship with Xavier. McAvoy explains the relationship between the two saying, "Charles has this sort of empathy for everybody. He has this connection to everybody because he can feel and see their experiences; their memories are his memories. But he wasn't looking for Erik; he didn't know he was there and he suddenly felt Erik and perhaps he has never connected to anybody quite the same way that he connected to Erik, you know? Maybe because of the nature of the horrible things that happened to him and the level of anger that he carries. That makes a big impression on him, not just because he feels empathy for him, but also because it's a big challenge to fix someone and to try to help someone like that."

Fassbender also weighed in on the two characters' relationship in an interview with AV Club, “The way we were looking at it was that Charles [Xavier] is like Martin Luther King and Magneto is more Malcolm X. Human beings, he hasn’t had a very good relationship with them, and doesn’t have a lot of faith or any trust in them. That’s the difference between him and Charles. Charles has hope in human beings, and Magneto thinks they’re just standing in the way of evolution. They’re going to wipe us out if we don’t wipe them out.”

He went on to mention that with Erik he didn't “think in terms of good and evil. I think about what he wants to get and how motivated he is and what sort of morals he has got in place. It's like I see him very much as a Machiavellian character. The end justifies the means. And you know, he is in a situation where he is really right!"

Actress Zoë Kravitz will play one of team's new mutants, Angel Salvadore , who possesses several superhuman abilities akin to those of the common housefly. In an interview with The Independent, Kravitz explains that filming First Class was, “impersonal in so many ways,” She continued, “My character flies and I'll be wearing a harness and I'd be wearing wires all the time. Then I'd have to stand in strange ways, pretending there are not wires and pretending that I'm flying and floating, like it's the most normal thing in the world. Also, Matthew Vaughn cares about the drama, it's not like he's trying to make things explode all the time, so you want to look the other actors in the eye and connect and connect. But it's kind of hard when all this other crazy stuff is going on."

The actress also mentions that she almost didn't audition for her eventual role in X-Men, "When it comes to stuff like X-Men, I just didn't think that I would get that part. I just think I auditioned because people were auditioning and my agent was like, 'Please go', and had to talk me into going."

James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, and Zoe Kravitz co-star with Rose Byrne, Jones, Kevin Bacon, Nicholas Hoult, Jennifer Lawrence, Caleb Landry Jones, Lucas Till, Edi Gathegi, Jason Flemyng, Oliver Platt, Morgan Lily, Bill Bilner. X-Men: First Class opens in theaters on June 3rd, 2011.