Michael Fassbender Interview For ‘X-Men: First Class’

http://www.flicksandbits.com/2011/05/27/michael-fassbender-interview-for-x-men-first-class/12056/

Michael Fassbender Interview For ‘X-Men: First Class’

michael fassbender x men Michael Fassbender Interview For X Men: First Class

Matthew Vaughn’s (Layer Cake, Kick Ass) ‘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 process, a grave rift between them opened, which began the eternal war between Magnthe world, and before Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Erik Lensherr (Michael Fassbender) 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 eto’s Brotherhood and Professor X’s X-Men. Look out for ‘X-Men: First Class’ in cinemas June 1st in the UK, and June 3rd in the US. Check out what Michael Fassbender had to say about the film below.

Professor Xavier and Magneto were established in the comic books, but also in the movies by two other actors, did you look at the actors or did you base your performance on the comic book?

Michael Fassbender: Yes, at the beginning when I found out that I’d got the job, I thought about studying Ian McKellen and getting my hands on anything I could where he was a young man on screen, you know, just to study his physicality and voice and whatnot. But then I sat down with Matthew Vaughn and we discussed it, and he had decided that that wasn’t the way he wanted to go. So at that point I ditched that idea totally and started to use the comic book material and other source material that was available. I was spoilt really because there was so much there.

The duelling ideologies are extremely prevalent in the movie, for Charles and Erik.

Michael Fassbender: For me that’s what interests me as an actor and as an audience member. When I go to the cinema, especially nowadays with big commerical films, and see that the audience is spoon-fed through the entire experience and they don’t have to do any work….I believe that if you go and see films that you should have to sort of invest something yourself, and that you have to do a bit of work as an audience member so that when you leave the cinema, you should be having those conversations. It’s like, “well, should I be backing Erik?” There should be an ambiguity, and there should be, I think, the grey areas is what‘s interesting. I don’t like, “okay here’s your villain, here’s your hero.” That just makes it too comfortable and easy for an audience.

X Men First Class Magneto Michael Fassbender Michael Fassbender Interview For X Men: First Class

How difficult is it to portray a lot of emotion while trying to bend metal with your hands?

Michael Fassbender: Well, I‘d been trying to work out how I could physically represent constipation through my hands (laughs). But seriously, I didn’t really know what to do. There was an element of me that felt like a bit of an idiot as a grown man trying to bend metal things with my hands. I wasn’t even sure if I should physicalise it with my hands. But the safety net was that Erik, at this point in his life, was not really sure how to harness these powers, it is a little bit haphazard and random. Of course, it’s only through meeting Charles that he sort of unleashes his full potential. I was really happy when I watched the film, because I’d seen some of what Bill [Milner] had done with young Erik, which was amazing, but I hadn’t seen any of the metal stuff. I was happy to see in the film how I was echoing what he had started off. I think it worked OK.

Is part of the appeal of appearing in a movie like this the complexity of the emotions and the big themes that come with the stories, perhaps more so than other comic book movies?

Michael Fassbender: I think that idea of alienation, for whatever reason, is still very prevalent within our society and a lot of people deal with it….most people deal with it at some point in their life, unless they’re sort of the golden child (laughs). I think that’s something that we all need to address. I think the fact that our race still continues to be very tribal, and we haven’t really moved away from that over hundreds and hundreds of years of experience, that’s quite interesting.

How did you feel about such an important historical event such as the Cuban missile crisis being appropriated for this film?

Michael Fassbender: I wasn’t around during that period of time but my parents were, I think there was something very interesting going on in the world at that time where everybody was unsure and there was a real sense of anxiety. People were building bunkers outside their houses and were stocking up on three years worth of canned goods. Nobody really knows the intrigue or how close we actually got to nuclear war at that point….what happened behind the scenes? What was going on? So I think there’s a mystery around that that’s definitely there to be exploited.