I’m sick of prequels. One of my biggest problems with this season of Lost is that it’s one giant prequel, filling in the gaps of stuff we already know. Plot points don’t move the story forward, they just bring us to familiar places. And that’s the problem with most prequels; the ending is never in doubt, so the journey has to be damned good.
Sadly, I must inform you that X-Men: First Class will be, in fact, a prequel. Lauren Shuler Donner was on the Fox Movie Channel tonight pretending that Tom Rothman supported X-Men Origins: Wolverine when she talked about this still-in-development film:
“It is the first class of Xavier’s school, way back when, so it’s young Scott, young Jean, young Beast and that’ll be really fun,” Donner said. “I think (the plan) is to follow some of the characters into their own stories, and weave them back into the X-Men world.
“And hopefully First Class will become its own franchise and we can follow them as they grow up.”
Ugh. Nothing could be less interesting to me than a series of films that are essentially Saved By Cerebro. I was hoping (against hope. I mean, look at the title of the movie) that this film would be about the New Mutants, the young students that are being taught at the Xavier school TODAY. Why do we want to see the adventures of Lil Beast and Lil Cyclops and Lil Jean Grey, all presumably scored to 90s music like Silverchair?
Somehow the X-Men franchise has become hopelessly caught in its own past; while no X-Men 4 is scheduled, we might be looking at no less than three prequel franchises (Magneto remains in the works). How does madness like this happen?