People who don’t like Spoilers, do not read this article please, but for impatient people like myself, you have no idea what’s coming when they release X-Men: First Class… Thankfully, Scottish actor James McAvoy who plays the role of young Charles Xavier gave lots and lots of details in his recent interview with IGN Movies…
So does that scene with his legs happen in the film?
Yeah, it does. We see why he can no longer walk and why he is in a wheelchair. And hopefully we’ll find out why he lost his hair as well. In the comics he loses his hair when he sort of gains or discovers his powers. But obviously that is not the way they wanted to go in this case.
Were you wondering what you would look like with a shaved head?
Yeah, I shaved it not that long ago, so when I started this my hair was particularly short and they wanted me with long hair. It was one of the only studio notes I got, they wanted me to have hair. So we had a lot of extensions for the first month. But yeah, I was kind of up for shaving my head. The only thing with shaving your head, there is just so much make-up that has to go onto it and so much CG-ing ultimately and dialling down with lighting tones and stuff, because basically if you shave your head you just look like a guy who shaved his head; you don’t look like a guy who is actually bald.
So how do you approach playing a young Patrick Stewart? Are you mimicking his voice?
No. At one point in very early rehearsals Matthew spoke to Michael and I about doing a voice and we did for about two minutes and he just kind of scotched that straight away.
And is there any kind of a love triangle element involving Erik or is it just a bit of romance between you and Rose?
Between me and Rose it’s just me and Rose. There is a love triangle between me, Fassbender and Jennifer Lawrence who plays Raven. It’s not a love triangle… basically she’s my assistant in this film, and obviously by the other films she is not my assistant anymore; she is very much not my assistant. Actually that’s quite good fun to see how that relationship disintegrates as well and why she ultimately goes over to the dark side as well.
his is moviemaking on a huge scale – does it help your performance to work on these huge sets and in these massive man-made environments?
Yeah, walking around Cerebro [Xavier's device for detecting other mutants] for the first time, it’s quite good fun. Did you get to see Cerebro?
No, just a model.
Yeah, that is pretty cool and as much as its massive and big and all that, it was still dead-60s, so it’s almost quite low-tech. Low-tech in the way that they didn’t have a microchip so the computers have to be massive and hanging off the walls everywhere. There are lots of flashy lights and spools of films. That was fun. It is quite nice but the weird thing is in all these films you’ve got to try to get it; you’ve got to try and bring yourself down in the moment between the two and three and four actors that are there and try and make it as vital and real and from moment-to-moment as possible, otherwise it does just become a bit set.
The one where they are messing about with their powers?
Yeah, it’s basically like the first night of their new mutant existence and they all get a bit drunk and show their powers off to each other, wreck the [frick]ing joint and then CIA come in and go ‘Oi, for God’s sake, you’re on Presidential money here at the moment. We’ve got some work to do.’ And I never liked the scene, but I realized the reason I didn’t like the scene is because I shouldn’t be in it and neither should Michael. They ultimately at the last minute wrote both him and I out of it, which I am really grateful for because it was a scene for the younger element. And I think it does help that we are a bit older than… there is a real of teacher/pupil dynamic going on in Charles’ eyes anyway; not so much from Erik but in Charles’ eyes anyway I think he quite likes that dynamic, I think he wants to cultivate that.
I really can’t wait for this movie to be released, it’s going to be awesome.. First of all, X-Men is one of the greatest comic stories ever created, the characters are extremely complicated and real in a way. X-Men really shows some of the current issues that we face each and every day in our daily life, lets forget Mutants and super powers for a second, it’s shows in a very unique and original way how humans are afraid from anything different, which of course we show in behaviors like racism and extremism that we still have until this day.
YIIIKES