Just yesterday, we brought you an image from the Matthew Vaughn directed X-Men: First Class that appeared on MSN and then vanished, propagated throughout the internet, some people called it a fake and then 20th Century Fox said it was not an official image and requested that some sites remove it.
Aside from Fox asking to remove it, even though they said it wasn’t an official image, after viewing the EXIF data, I seriously doubted that it was a fake. I thought that it was likely an official image that was released too soon, and it looks as though I was right (that happens sometimes).
20th Century Fox has now officially released the high-resolution version of that image (which magically reappeared at the same MSN url), along with the official teaser poster for the film that producer, Bryan Singer sent to the HeadGeek himself. Check them out below!
[Click Images To Blow Sh!t Up]
Poster via AICN | Images via MSN
Update: Apparently director Matthew Vaughn heard about all of the fanboy groaning over the team image above and sent a couple of new images, along with a message to Peter over at /Film. Vaughn said,
“I freaked out on them yesterday. I don’t know where the hell that came from. I don’t think it’s a Fox image. It’s not a pre-approved image. When I found out, I said, what the fuck is this shit, and Fox is running around trying to figure out what happened as well. I agree. It’s like a bad photoshop, which maybe it was by someone. It didn’t reflect the movie. I was shocked when I saw it. I was like ‘Jesus Christ’…
[Click Images To Blow Sh!t Up]
Vaughn continued,
“I’m a fan of X-Men. We’re not bastardizing X-Men, I’m trying to get them back to being whole again.”
In other First Class news… 20th Century Fox recently ponied up some cool “official” images from the film, and Matthew Vaughn, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Kevin Bacon have all given recent interviews where they spoke about their forthcoming X-Film. Check everything out below!
Director Matthew Vaughn was interviewed by the LATimes near the end of principal photography on the film and had this to say:
“I’m at that stage where I feel like a boxer against the ropes. I’m just throwing punches and taking them as they come and making sure I don’t hit the canvas. We’re filming at the moment, we’ve a lot to get done. I’ve never worked under such time pressure. The good thing about the independent world is I never even knew if I was going to get distribution. I’m used to finishing a film and then crossing your fingers that someone is going to like it. This is totally doing it the other way around. We’ve definitely got a release date and we’ve got to make it.”
McAvoy spoke with the LATimes about his character, Professor Charles Xavier:
“This isn’t a reboot, so I’m not replacing anyone, in which case you might want to try to be as different as possible and stay away from what had been done before. This is a prequel, so I’m the same character, just younger, but the challenge for me – and for Michael Fassbender – is to show the same person in a different place in their life; to show someone before they’re this bad guy, before they’re this saint. Charles wasn’t always a … monk, this selfless, sexless monk that he becomes.”
Michael Fassbender spoke to MSN about living up to Ian McKellen‘s earlier performances as Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto, and the choice of mutants in the film:
“Hopefully I won’t disappoint the fan base out there, because I know that what Ian McKellen did sort of latched onto a lot of imaginations and was very successful. But what drew me was the script and Matthew Vaughn and the fact that James McAvoy was going to be playing young Xavier. I thought it was a fresh take on the whole story. I’ve never been a big comic book enthusiast, but I thought it was an interesting concept to go back to when they were both friends and initially came together.”
“The cool thing about this movie is that I think it does deal with each individual mutant, and the ones they’ve chosen are all very much individuals and unique personalities with unique gifts. What’s interesting is that we’ve gone back to a period where the mutants don’t know that there are other people out there like them. They just think they’re freaks and outcasts from society … all of these new characters are fearful of their gifts and uncomfortable and misplaced in society, so hopefully when they all sort of come together and realize they’re not alone and feel more comfortable in their own skin, that’s a discovery for all the characters that you experience.”
Kevin Bacon spoke with Moviefone about his character, Sebastian Shaw and the 1960s era production designs:
“You don’t see much [of his backstory] in the movie, but he’s kind of a self-made man. He lost his father as a young man, made his first million by the time he was 30 and first billion by time he was 40. He’s a very powerful billionaire and also, as it turns out, a mutant. He’s the leader of the Hellfire Club, which is a nightclub for the rich and extremely powerful. And he has a plot to take over the world, so that’s really fun. He’s incredibly good at manipulating people and at taking whatever kind of energy or ability they have and using it to his advantage, like if he’s talking to a German, he’s fluent in German. He’s very charming and able to get whatever he wants.”
“I’ve got some pretty nice pads and I’m kind of slick in that way. I don’t think it’s visually, in terms of camera moves, it’s not trying to recreate that. But it has an element of that. The set design is fantastic. I’ve only seen the sets that I’ve been on and they are really interesting and very ’60s modern and super cool, and beautiful. I have one set that’s kind of like an inner sanctum and then I also have a submarine; the inside of the sub has elements of my other set. I have my own set of style and wanted to translate it over to my board room and stuff. It’s great. I love the way it looks.”
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.
