Professor Xavier himself James McAvoy discusses X-Men: First Class and the possibility of X-sequels

X-MEN: FIRST CLASS is finally upon us this weekend. And by pretty much all critical accounts, it seems director Matthew Vaughn has put together not just a great entry in the overall X-Men franchise, but quite simply a terrific comic book film.

Part of that success can be attributed to actor James McAvoy who portrays a young Professor Charles Xavier in the film. In speaking with Hero Complex over at the LA Times, McAvoy indulges with a bit of talk regarding the current film, and the outlook for more X-sequels:

“I keep hearing bits and bobs from the different founts that there are or the different mouths that there are on this job. All I know is that if this one makes some money, they will definitely want to make another one. We’ve had pretty strong critical reaction thus far. I don’t know if they’d make it just on the back of that, if they didn’t make the kind of money they hope for. I don’t know, but I can’t see them making it just on that. I just hope that, if it happens, they make it because they found a story they like rather than making it just because there’s more money to be made. I’ve been lucky that, even though I’ve done a couple of bad or silly movies in the past, that’s the way they ended up; the studios made them because they were passionate about them. I’d hate to be in something that started right off as something cynical.”

McAvoy, hopeful that the people in charge will look beyond just FIRST CLASS’s box office, adds:

“We all want to make money, but there was also a cool idea and a cool story. Everybody thought, ‘Oh great, there’s a prequel/reboot, just what we don’t need,’ but the idea was to explore that thing that fans were crying out for, those tiny moments in the other movies were you see Sir Patrick [Stewart] and Sir Ian [McKellen] come together. Those moments were few and far between, but they were some of the most intriguing parts of those films. I think the idea of building a movie around that is what inspired this and, for me, validated doing this.”

The one thing that FIRST CLASS really nails is character. If sequels were to be made, what sort of dynamics would we see between those characters, whether they be “good” or “bad”?

“I’ve lots of ideas. I know Michael [Fassbender] and I are very much on the same page all the time and we’ll be weighing in to protect that relationship between the two characters. One of the things about this movie is: In all the others Magneto is your bad guy and Professor X and the X-Men are the good guys; in this one, it’s not like that. It’s much more sophisticated or complex, at least, and we need to come up with a way to do that moving forward. The next movie, if there is one, shouldn’t just start off with them being pals again, but I think it also shouldn’t be like the first movies only set in the 1960s. If we get another, let’s not just make Magneto the bad guy; of course he’s a bad-ass and of course he has a whole different ethos, but making a movie that is black-and-white is going to lose the thing that we have in this one… In the comics, Magneto goes back and forth, there are times when they are friends, there are times when he’s running the school. In the first Fox movie, if you want to be a fanboy about it, Patrick Stewart says … that ‘Erik Lehnsherr helped me build Cerebro,’ which is like Professor X’s Death Star. And it is like the Death Star in the other movies, it’s forever being built or being destroyed.”

Sophistication? Complexity of character? In a comic book film? A fun comic book film? Get out of here!

X-MEN: FIRST CLASS opens this weekend.