This Class is Getting Crowded

X-Men: First Class Seeing too Much of a Good Thing?

As many hardcore comic book fans may know, next summer's movie line-up will be a haven for lovers of the mutant kind. With the likes of Captain America, Thor, the Spider-Man reboot, and Green Lantern, one of these anticipated titles includes the reboot of the X-Men franchise "X-Men: First Class." Directed by "Layer Cake" and "Kick-Ass" helmer Matthew Vaughn, the film will chronicle the early beginnings of Professor Xavier's friendship with Magneto, and how both would ultimately turn against each other in their growing disagreement over how to handle the relationship between humans and mutants, ultimately spawning the X-Mansion and the Brotherhood of Mutants. Anyways, the film is set to release next June and lately there's been a flurry of casting choices that really has me concerned over just what kind of shape this movie is in.

Mcavoy as Professor 'Wheels' Xavier

Today it was announced that 'Mad Men' starlet January Jones is the newest addition to the film, which is adding to an already heavy line-up of Hollywood talent. Headlining the film are James Macavoy as a young Professor Xavier, and Michael Fassbender as a young Magneto (both of which are excellent choices in my opinion). Among the rest of the big line-up of talent are Kevin Bacon as an unknown villain, Oliver Platt as a mysterious character called "Man in Black," Rose Byrne as a possible Moira McTaggert, and the list goes on and on. But just like Lebron joining the Heat with D-Wade and Chris Bosh, this film has me concerned over who will be the star in this movie. Just how many characters will audiences have to keep track of, and will each of them have their due screen time?

The dude from 300 as Magneto...nice

Another concern of mine is not just the big name casting, but the fact that the film hasn't even begun filming yet, and we're about 9 months away from its release. I'm not sure how the movie industry works, but I imagine 9 months to shoot, edit, re-shoot, and polish your film has to take a bit of time. On top of that, news broke a couple of weeks ago of director Matthew Vaughn claiming he had to scrap at least 12 pages of the film's script because an action sequence in 'First Class' involved a zero-gravity fight scene which Vaughn claims was too similar to a  scene in Christopher Nolan's "Inception" (which is truly an amazing film by the way). So some of the big questions I have is whether this film will be delayed, or will it be too rushed in its production?

Nolan makes the guy from 500 Days of Summer badass

Whatever the case may be, I have a great deal of trust in director Matthew Vaughn. He's dealt with problems like this in films before, (look into the drama to get Kick-Ass funded) and he's come out swinging for the fences and kicking the audience's ass with his awesomeness(no pun intended...who am I kidding? hells yea it is!). I'm all for adding as much amazing talent to your film as possible, but sometimes too much of a good thing can be bad and it's just hard for audiences to really connect to a character that gets 5 minutes of screen time. I mean, just look at the Ocean's Eleven franchise. Until then, as Stan Lee would say, stick around true believers!