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Australian philosopher, literary critic, legal scholar, and professional writer. Based in Newcastle, NSW. My latest books are THE TYRANNY OF OPINION: CONFORMITY AND THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM (2019) and AT THE DAWN OF A GREAT TRANSITION: THE QUESTION OF RADICAL ENHANCEMENT (2021).

Sunday, January 23, 2011

New X-Men movie in June

There's been some scattered publicity about the new X-Men movie, X-Men: First Class, which is coming our way in June. This could be either a cool reinterpretation or a travesty - from what's being said, it will be a radical reinterpretation of the franchise, cool or not, complete with a young Professor X who still has his hair. (Hmm, I'm not sure whether that's going to work for such an iconic character.)

OTOH, some of the ideas do seem on the ball thematically. It will be set during the early 1960s at the time of the American civil rights movement, and the analogy with human/mutant relations will come through clearly. We'll see Sebastian Shaw and Emma Frost, the look of the movie will be classic James Bondish, and the narrative will focus on how Professor X and Magneto came to be enemies after originally being friends. Thus, it will be a prequel to the first three X-Men movies, which are set 40 years later.

Fans of the comics who want movies to reflect comic-book continuity will be disappointed by some dramatic departures, but it sounds as if it may have something to offer fans of the overall dramatic intentions of the franchise. A lot of the early buzz is about January Jones playing Emma Frost. I can also totally see Michael Fassbender playing a younger version of Magneto than Ian McKellen's.

The above is what I've gleaned here and there. I don't have one good link that makes all the above clear, though you can obviously google as appropriate. Anyway, I'll provide some links in later posts as the movie gets a bit closer and we see more publicity material.

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