James McAvoy Discusses His Wishes for X-Men: First Class 2
Posted 11.20.11 by Ryan
Twentieth Century Fox has yet to officially announce a sequel for X-Men: First Class, but that hasn't stopped cast members from talking about it. Michael Fassbender, who played Erik Lensherr, a.k.a. Magneto, recently revealed that he's "looking forward to working with all those people again," and Jason Flemyng, who plays the teleporter Azazel, recently said that "fingers crossed I'll be bright red again by next summer." James McAvoy, who played Charles Xavier, a.k.a. Professor X, agrees with the idea of a sequel.
In a recent interview with io9, McAvoy said he "would definitely like to be in the sequel," though, he qualified, "I'm bound to be in the sequel by a contract that says we do three films. So if Fox decides we're doing it, then I don't have a choice." Not that McAvoy minds. "But I would still like to," McAvoy continued. "I had a great time with [director] Matthew [Vaughn] and Michael, that was a great threesome to work with and really sort of carve out a new beginning for those two characters."
During Fassbender's recent interview, the actor revealed that he was "really interested to see what happens to Charles" and McAvoy is of the same mind. Only, the Scottish actor thinks that the character has more growing to do before he becomes the amiable mentor he was in the X-Men trilogy. "He can't just become the guy that we saw in the first three movies>"
I don't know where we find Erik — it's kind of defined at the end of the film that he's a bad guy. I can't really speak for him, but I know that with Charles, you either have to write him out of the movie or give him an interesting story. He can't just become the guy that we saw in the first three movies. He just had two major things happen to him. He's lost his best friend, essentially, and he's just been paralyzed from the waist down. Which is just a huge, huge blow to his considerable ego. So he's got to deal with that.
And I don't think we can just brush over that and go, 'Yeah I'm in a wheelchair now,' because Professor X is in a wheelchair. You've got to deal with that, I don't care if he's a superhero and has brain powers or not, he's just had a huge part of his physical life taken away from him, by someone he cares about more than anyone else. So he's got to deal with that. That's part of the interesting ideas that we're talking about with Matthew [Vaughn], that Matthew's very excited about which I think is fantastic, but I can't really get into them with you because they may (or may not) form the spine of the story.
Reportedly, First Class producer Simon Kinberg, who also wrote 2006's X-Men: The Last Stand, is writing X-Men: First Class 2 for Fox, though McAvoy did not comment nor was asked about Kinberg's hiring. McAvoy did say that he's glad the studio isn't rushing the sequel.
The good thing is, I don't think Fox is rushing into it just because it did well. They want to make sure they get a good script, because if you can't get a good story there's no point in doing it. It can be a stand-alone film if we can't figure out a good story.
First Class was one of the most critically-acclaimed comic book movies of the summer, as well as a box office success, earning $335 million in worldwide box office. McAvoy says that Vaughn has "come up with a particularly interesting idea" for the sequel, which could be the idea that Kinberg is writing up. We'll see if Fox ever formally announce X-Men: First Class 2.