Matthew Vaughn is sick. Literally. On a Tuesday morning in late May, the director of the upcoming X-Men First Class called us from London with a case of tonsillitis. The timing couldn't be worse. Vaughn is about to release the biggest movie of his career, 20th Century Fox's summer superhero tentpole, X-Men First Class, a film that serves as both a prequel and reboot to a popular series of films that began in 2000 with Bryan Singer's X-Men. Starring James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender as younger versions of Charles and Erik, who will grow up to be Professor X and Magneto respectively, the Sixties-set film tells the origin story of the X-Men infused with the exciting action and fantastic social conceits that make the X-Men great.
On top of that, the film is solid; an entertaining love letter to the X-Men franchise that's both a treat for fans but totally accessible to non-fans. Most of that is thanks to magnetic lead performances and a well-thought out screenplay that Vaughn co-wrote along with writing partner Jane Goldman and Thor writers Ashley Miller and Zack Stentz. X-Men First Class is up there with the best of the Singer X-Men movies and does its job so well that the franchise can go anywhere from here.
In our short 10-minute interview Vaughn talked about that, how he regretted not making X-Men: The Last Stand, how the insane profitability of Kick Ass (you read that right) could lead to Kick Ass 2 and much more. Check it out after the break.
/Film: Hey Matthew how are you.
Matthew Vaughn: Believe it or not I've got tonsillitis which I haven't had since I was a kid and it's painful.
Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Especially coming into a movie opening, it's probably the worst possible time for that to happen.
Well, actually I've got a tradition of getting sick as soon as I finish a film and I only finished it last week so I think now that my body is sort of relaxing… there you are. Fire away.
You were up for X3 as well as Thor, what was it about X-Men First Class that finally made you decide to make a Marvel movie?
It was gonna happen. Immediately. X3 I didn't do purely because I was naïve enough back then to apply my low budget filmmaking experience and didn't think I'd have enough time to make the film I wanted to make. And since then I've made Kick Ass and Stardust so I have far more experience as a director. I was sort of kicking myself for not doing X3 and then what happened with Thor was I worked on the screenplay with Mark Protosevich and was beginning to start do concept work and stuff on it and then I realized that they weren't going to commit to making it as quickly as I would have hoped for. Ironically I've now made, in that time period, Kick Ass and X-Men First Class. And when Fox rang up saying are you interested in doing it, I had unfinished business after not doing X3 and I was actually more excited because for X3 I would have really had to follow the lead of X1 and X2 and the characters were mainly cast. I knew with X-Men First Class I could start fresh, get a new piece of canvas and paint what I wanted.
That leads into my next question. You're obviously coming into a franchise with four previous films and, though you are in a different time period and could recast, during production, how aware were you of those movies and how – if at all – did they affect what you were doing?
My main goal was to make as good a film that could stand on its own two feet regardless of all the other films. However I thought anything that worked in all the other movies, and I could have some fun with nodding towards, I would. But my main rule was, 'You know what, we're trying to reboot and start a whole new X-Men franchise' and therefore, making a film work on its own two feet was far more important than trying to be referential to the prior movies.
But those previous films, is that why you and the other screenwriters chose the characters that are in this movie as opposed to the line up that's in the original First Class comic?
That was already done for me. When I came aboard, the characters were already done and ironically I'd always wanted to do a Bond movie so I sort of thought I could have my cake and eat it too. I can do a Bond film and an X-Men movie at the same time. And I'd always liked political, Col
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