Nothing I am about to write makes sense to me on a Hollywood business level, but it sounds utterly delightful on a moviegoer level:
X-Men: First Class will be set in the 60s.
Harry Knowles talked to producer Bryan Singer about the prequel, which Matthew Vaughn is shooting London, and spilled the beans that the film will be set during the era that Marvel was originally publishing the first comics. Expect to see Professor X walking and with a head of hair, and to watch as he and Magneto form the X-Men. The bad guys will be the Hellfire Club, with Kevin Bacon as Sebastian Shaw. Knowles, who provides no direct quotes from Singer (which is kind of frustrating), keeps using ‘James Bond’ as a descriptor – I’m imagining he’s talking about the style and fashion of the Sean Connery Bond films.
According to Knowles, the costumes will be closer to comic book costumes than any other in recent film history. The team will be big, and there are more characters joining who we don’t yet know about, but there will not be a Scott Summers or a Jean Grey.
I guess those two are missing because we already saw how they joined the team, and Vaughn’s film seems to be trying to maintain some rough and weird continuity with the previous films, and with X-Men Origins: Wolverine. I don’t know how anybody at Fox thinks that a superhero movie set in the 60s will be a hit, since they turned down Peyton Reed’s vision for a 1963-set Fantastic Four, but fuck it, I’m just happy it’s happening (although honestly I’d rather see a Silver Age FF film; the X-Men didn’t really hit their strides as characters until the 70s anyway, and the early, failed run of the book isn’t my favorite).
I can’t wait to get a look at these costumes. I’ve heard that the film is moving forward without a really solid script – not that surprising considering how quick the turnaround on this has been – but I hope that Vaughn’s vision is strong enough to make it work.