X-Men: First Class Trivia

Trivia about X-Men: First Class.


 * Josh Schwartz wrote an early version of the screenplay, but once Bryan Singer became attached, Schwartz's script was ditched as Singer wanted to take the story in a different direction. Jamie Moss was subsequently hired to write a new draft.
 * Bryan Singer was offered the director's chair but had to turn it down due to his commitment to Jack the Giant Killer (2011). Singer stayed on the project as a producer however.
 * In April 2006 Zak Penn was hired to write and direct this film; he was going to make a prequel about Magneto, in a vein similar to X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009). However, the filmmakers decided to shift the focus from the early years of one mutant to those of the X-Men. Penn found this approach more interesting than what he'd come up with and so stepped down with his blessing.
 * Matthew Vaughn was originally hired to direct X-Men: The Last Stand (2006), but left citing pressure from the studio to finish the film within a short time.
 * Amber Heard was rumored to play Mystique before Jennifer Lawrence was cast.
 * Taylor Lautner was considered to play Hank McCoy (aka Beast) but dropped out due to scheduling conflicts. Broadway actor Benjamin Walker was previously cast as Beast, however he dropped out of the role to star in the Broadway musical Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. Nicholas Hoult was later cast.
 * Rosamund Pike was rumored to play both Moira McTaggert and Emma Frost. Rose Byrne was later cast as Moira and January Jones as Emma Frost. Alice Eve was cast as Emma Frost, but a deal couldn't be reached and Sarah Harding was called back three times for the role of Emma Frost but the part went to January Jones.
 * The film is based on the "X-Men" comics 'Uncanny X-Men' (1963) and 'X-Men: First Class' (2006).
 * The uniforms the X-Men wear are colored blue and yellow, in homage to the original blue/yellow suits the X-Men wore in the comics from1963 (their debut) to 2001 (when X-Men (2000) inspired a change to black leather).
 * Director Matthew Vaughn cited the first two X-Films, Star Trek (2009) and the 1960s Bond films as major influences on this film.
 * Filming was originally to take place on Tybee Island, but a producer browsing on the online map program Google Earth found Jekyll Island to be a more suitable location.
 * Sirs Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen were considered to appear in the film as the elder Professor X and Magneto, but the idea was rejected as the filmmakers wanted to start a new X-Men trilogy, without any connection to the previous films.
 * Both Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy appeared in "Band of Brothers" (2001) at the start of their careers. This marks their first appearance together since then.
 * Tahyna Tozzi was considered to reprise her role as Emma Frost from X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009).
 * A telepathic battle between Professor X and Emma Frost was going to be in the film, but upon the release of Inception (2010) the concept was scrapped.
 * This is the first X-Film without Cyclops.
 * Michael Fassbender, who plays the Jewish character Magneto in this film, had earlier played an Allied Forces soldier in Inglourious Basterds (2009). Paradoxically and ironically, Sir Ian McKellen, who also played Magneto, had earlier played a Nazi in Apt Pupil (1998) (thus going the other way from Fassbender).
 * The Hellfire Club's leader, En Sabah Nur (more famously known as the Apocalypse), was influenced by Batman Begins (2005)'s Henri Ducard and the Mandarin in the Iron Man films.
 * The Man in Black (Oliver Platt) is a government agent, a reference to the S.H.I.E.L.D. agency that has appeared in recent Marvel films. His title is also a tribute to the Men in Black, who supervise/are connected with paranormal activity on earth (adapted as a comic by Lowell Cunningham, made into a film by Barry Sonnenfeld).
 * In the comics Alex Summers (Havok) was the brother of Scott Summers (Cyclops). In this film, Alex's relationship with Scott is unknown.
 * James Howlett will make a cameo.
 * The filmmakers hired an "X-Men" specialist to help the cast understand their roles.
 * Matthew Vaughn instructed the cast to do away with all accents in their performances. James McAvoy had planned to copy Patrick Stewart's voice (since McAvoy was going to play a younger version of Stewart's Xavier), but Vaughn quashed it; Vaughn also told Rose Byrne that Moira MacTaggart would not have her trademark Scottish accent in the film (to the Scottish McAvoy's mild disappointment).
 * The film was originally to be a prequel about Magneto. Screenwriter Sheldon Turner wrote a treatment which he described as "X-Men (2000) meets The Pianist (2002)": the story focused on Magneto's early years as a prisoner of war in a Nazi concentration camp, until liberation by a squad of Allied Forces led by Charles Xavier. They later meet after the war and become friends, and later become rivals. The studio decided to change the film's direction to the early years of the X-Men, but incorporated aspects of Turner's script into the film.
 * To prepare for his role as Erik Lensherr, Michael Fassbender studied Sir Ian McKellen's performance as Lensherr in the previous X-Films, but also looked through the comics as he decided to make his own version of Magneto: "You want to respect what someone else has done, especially because the fan base really liked what Ian has done with it. But while I could have gone and studied him as a young man and brought that to the performance, I don't think Matthew is very interested in that. So I'm just going my own way and working with whatever is in the comic books and the script."
 * To prepare for his role as Beast, Nicholas Hoult studied Kelsey Grammer's performance as Beast in X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) and Grammar's early series "Frasier" (1993); he also underwent training in athletics, weightlifting and boxing.