Wednesday, August 18, 2010

X-Men: First Class Adds Zoe Kravitz and January Jones, Plus Child Actors to Play Young Versions of Mystique and Magneto

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The X-Men: First Class casting train just keeps rolling. We said this week would see a flurry of news, and now here's another batch of casting announcements. Some of the roles are pretty big, some are minor, and they're all buried after the break, because that's just the way things have to be.

Deadline offers up a whole plate of news. The big notes are that January Jones and Zoe Kravitz will play Emma Frost and Angel, respectively. (Queue up your questions now: I'll get to them all in a moment.) And 10-year old Morgan Lily will play the young version of 'Raven'. Finally, Bill Milner will play young Magneto.

OK: question time. First up is probably "uh…isn't Angel a dude?" To the best of my knowledge, yes. So did Deadline get wires crossed and is Kravitz actually playing a character like Storm,  is Fox deliberately sending out wrong info, or have Matthew Vaughn, Jane Goldman and the other writers, along with Fox, pulled a switch? (Keep in mind that Angel was seen in X3, too so we've already seen the character as a man.) We don't know, to be honest. One of the first two options is most likely.

Furthermore, wasn't Alice Eve playing Emma Frost? That was the report, but Deadline says that deal never went through. And XMenFilms.net was saying that Morgan Lily would be the youthful Mystique, rather than Raven…Oh, but 'Raven Darkholme' is the real name of Mystique. OK, one point of confusion cleared up, at least.

The Mystique casting isn't very exciting, when the very capable Jennifer Lawrence is on hand to play the more adult version. But it might say something about what we can expect to see — some of Mystique's origin, at least.

A final question: are Cyclops and Jean Grey even in the film? There's a good chance they're not; I've heard both yes and no, but at this point am being told that this is basically the Professor X and Magneto show, with a lot of these extra characters on hand to fill things out. That is, the 'no's very much outweigh the 'yeses'. In the meantime we'll look for info about Angel, and try to clear up that tidbit of news for certain.

  • Alice Eve Joining X-Men: First Class as Emma Frost; Tommy Lee Jones Double-Confirmed for Captain America
  • Oliver Platt Joins X-Men: First Class
  • /Filmcast Ep. 111 - The Other Guys (GUEST: Eric D. Snider from Film.com and Cinematical)
  • Matthew Vaughn Agreed to Direct X-Men: First Class Because He Believes Superhero Movies Will Be Dead Soon
  • X-Men: First Class Producer Suggests Aaron Johnson is Not in the Film
  • The Inception Effect: New X-Men Film Sheds 'Physics-Bending' Fight Scenes

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