We have previously brought you some behind the scenes shots from the set of director Matthew Vaughn‘s (Kick-Ass, Stardust) upcoming 20th Century Fox film, X-Men: First Class starring James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender, and Kevin Bacon.
Now, what started out as an image posted on MSN (and has since vanished) and propagated through the internet like wildfire, is what could be the first image of characters from the film. The image has been taken down from some of the sites who had posted it, with messages stating that 20th Century Fox told them it was not an authorized image and that the studio asked them to remove it. Check it out below!
[L to R – Michael Fassbender (Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto), Rose Byrne (Dr. Moira MacTaggert), January Jones (Emma Frost), Jason Flemyng (Azazel), Nicholas Hoult (Hank McCoy/Beast), Lucas Till (Alex Summers/Havok), Zoë Kravitz (Angel Salvadore), Jennifer Lawrence ( Raven Darkholme/Mystique), and James McAvoy (Professor Charles Xavier).]
Personally, I wouldn’t doubt that this was a fake, it seems a little to photoshoppy for my tastes and don’t see why Fox would release an image with so many characters in costume already, rather than teasing the characters one-by-one. That, and the absence of other mutant characters like Edi Gathegi (Darwin), and Caleb Landry Jones (Banshee).
On the other side of the argument… why would Fox make people remove it from their sites, if it weren’t real? If it’s not their intellectual property, then what legal grounds do they have to request removal of the image? And, according to the image’s EXIF data, it was in-fact processed in Photoshop (as most images are these days) but, the image was taken on November 4th, 2010 (so, the film was in production at the time), and it was taken with a Phase One P45+ Medium Format camera, which is a seriously professional camera system that costs around $22 thousand dollars.
Image EXIF Data
I’m not sure if EXIF data can be easily faked, or not. I do know that the Phase One P45+ isn’t a very commonly known camera to most consumers, nor even to advanced prosumer/amateur photographers. So, if the image were a fake and the EXIF data was manipulated, the chances of someone picking that camera over a Canon 5D Mark II or a comparable Nikon, which are more widely known, are pretty slim.
Real or Fake? Let me know what you think in the comments, and if you think it’s real… what do you think of the look of X-Men: First Class?
Synopsis:
“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 stars James McAvoy, Kevin Bacon, Caleb Landry Jones, Lucas Till, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Edi Gathegi, Jason Flemyng, January Jones, Zoë Kravitz, Bill Milner, Michael Fassbender, Álex González, Oliver Platt and Ray Wise.
X-Men: First Class is slated to hit theaters on June 3rd, 2011.
