Trivia / X-Men: First Class

• Ability over Appearance: James McAvoy—who is well-known for his Pretty Boy looks and his thick, wavy brown hair—doesn't physically resemble Patrick Stewart (and Professor X in the comics was blond before he went bald), but the "Band of Brothers" featurette on the Blu-Ray/DVD makes it clear that the filmmakers' first choice for the role was McAvoy because he's a very talented thespian.
  Matthew Vaughn: James was the first actor we cast. I've always been a fan of James, I think he's a tremendous actor.
  Simon Kinberg: When initially somebody said, "What about James McAvoy for Charles?", I said, "That is the greatest idea I've ever heard, he'll never do it. Why would he take on somebody else's role which he is only going to be compared to Patrick Stewart?"
  Lauren Shuler Donner: James McAvoy, one of the world's best actors, he's just incredible.
• Ashcan Copy: The film was born because 20th Century Fox, which was the owner of the rights to the X-Men Film Series at the time, didn't want to see the rights revert back to Marvel Comics, given that they now produce their own films (and are owned by Disney), making big bucks doing it with megahits like The Avengers (2012), and was no longer licensing out their properties to competitors. Proving that Tropes are Not Bad, the film was well-received by critics and moviegoers alike, though it's debatable how well it did at the box office.
• Awesome, Dear Boy:
  • Many of the actors were fans of the X-Men or superheroes in general — Caleb Landry Jones (Banshee) had auditioned without knowing which character he was up for, and he was simply grateful that they sought someone like him ("I've got red hair and freckles, I'm not gonna be Batman, Robin or Spider-Man").
  • Hugh Jackman said he could not pass over his cameo as he was given a Precision F-Strike.
  • Jennifer Lawrence had never seen the previous movies, so watched them and became a fan. This made her sign on, along with the prospect of working with Matthew Vaughn, James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender.
• B-Team Sequel: Bryan Singer was the first choice for the director's chair, but he had to drop out due to scheduling conflicts with Jack the Giant Slayer. Considering the success of the follow-up X-Men: Days of Future Past, it makes you wonder what his vision would've been like.
• Bonus Material: Not many fans are aware that there are two rare featurettes which were only included on a very limited number of Blu-Rays: "Extraordinary Abilities" and "Magneto the Survivor."
• California Doubling: Englefield House in Reading, UK serves as the exterior for the Xavier mansion. The small island near Cuba is actually Georgia's Jekyll Island with some palm trees.
• Cast the Runner-Up:
  • Lucas Till was told that his audition served for both Havok and Beast.
  • Edi Gathegi (Darwin) originally auditioned for Banshee.
• Creator Backlash: Edi Gathegi was less than satisfied with his role as Darwin in this film, as he pointed out that him dying rather early on in the film without ever coming back to life or adapting to his surroundings like in the comics makes his mutant abilities here seem like an Informed Attribute at best. With the X-Men rights reverting back to Marvel Studios however, Gathegi expressed interest in portraying the character again if he's asked.
• Creator-Chosen Casting: James McAvoy was Matthew Vaughn's top choice to play Charles Xavier, while he remembered Michael Fassbender from an earlier audition he did.
• Creator's Favorite: Matthew Vaughn has made it very clear in interviews that Magneto is his favourite X-Men character, and he even dismissed Professor X as being sanctimonious and boring. As a consequence, Erik is the main protagonist in First Class despite the film being heavily advertised as containing two lead characters of equal importance. If Vaughn had remained as the director for the sequel, Magneto would once again be the central figure, but after Bryan Singer replaced him, Singer then gave the spotlight to the younger Xavier because Charles is his favourite.
• Deleted Scene: See here.
• Dyeing for Your Art:
  • To prepare for the role, James McAvoy had shaved his head... and then was told that Charles was to have a full head of hair. For the first month of shooting, he had to wear hair extensions.
  • Nicholas Hoult underwent training in athletics, weight lifting and boxing to prepare, and also spent four hours in the make-up chair to become the Beast, which included a mask, contact lenses, a furry muscle suit and fake teeth.
  • Jennifer Lawrence went on a diet, had to work out for two hours daily to keep in shape, and like Rebecca Romijn, endured an eight-hour make-up that even caused blisters on her body. (For the sequels, Lawrence wore a scaly bodysuit to reduce the prosthetics from full body to just the head.)
• Executive Meddling: The film was given a hard release date for when it had to come out, hiring the writers just thirteen months beforehand, without a director attached. One of the film's writers, Zack Stentz noted the Absurdly Short Production Time was actually beneficial to the film, as it meant the studio did not have time to second-guess every creative decision.
• Fake American: Rose Byrne (Australian) as Moira MacTaggert (where the Scottish scientist of the comics is instead a CIA agent), and Nicholas Hoult (English) as Dr. Hank McCoy.
• Fake Brit: Scotsman James McAvoy as the Oxford-educated Dr. Charles Xavier, who in this movie is revealed to be half-English through his mother.
• Fake Irish: American Caleb Landry Jones plays the Irish Sean Cassidy, a.k.a. Banshee.
• Fake Mixed Race: Armando Munoz, a.k.a. Darwin, is half-Mexican and half-African American. He is played by Edi Gathegi, who has no Latino ancestry of any sort.
• Fake Nationality: German-Irish Michael Fassbender as Erik Lehnsherr (who according to the comics is either German or Polish, but definitely not Irish). Also, William "Bill" Milner (kid Erik's actor) is actually English.
• Fake Russian: British Jason Flemyng as the Russian Azazel. Serbo-Croatian Rade Šerbedžija as the Russian general. Polish Olek Krupa as the commander of the Russian fleet. Of course, it's entirely possible that the general and the commander are supposed to be those ethnicities, while still being Soviet.
• Follow the Leader: This was the first film made after the Marvel Cinematic Universe really began to take off (X-Men Origins: Wolverine was in pre-production beforehand), and it's closer to those films in tone and visual style than the other X-Men films.
• Hey, It's That Place!: The set for the Xavier mansion was used in a TV series called HEX.
• Missing Trailer Scene:
  • The movie doesn't include an inspirational line of dialogue from Charles who tells Erik that "A new species is being born. Help me guide it, shape it, lead it."
  • There is no Meaningful Look between the two of them as they walk towards Alex's prison cell.
  • A close-up of Erik saying "Cheers" didn't make the final cut.
• Non-Singing Voice: Banshee's screams are provided by Josh Ramsay, not his actor Caleb Landry Jones.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Alex Gonzalez, who played Riptide, had only really played good guys in Spanish cinema. He loved the chance to play a villain.
  • While it's not his only villain role, Kevin Bacon has rarely played an antagonist as calculated, repulsive or downright hateable as Shaw.
• Production Posse: Matthew Vaughn brought his producer/writing partner Jane Goldman, costume designer Sammy Sheldon, and actor Jason Flemyng (who wanted to avoid make-up heavy roles after Clash of the Titans, but made an exception for Vaughn).
• Promoted Fanboy: James McAvoy and Nicholas Hoult were fond of X-Men: The Animated Series when they were younger, and Hoult was also a fan of the original trilogy in the X-Men Film Series. When it comes to the comic books, Lucas Till is the most knowledgeable among the cast members.
• Referenced by...:
  • In The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015), which is also set in The '60s, Illya Kuryakin's clothing and hairstyle are virtually identical to Erik Lehnsherr's.◊
  • The look of Severin from the Season 9 comics of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was partially modeled on Charles Xavier.
  • James McAvoy parodies his own performance in XMFC when he realizes that he's paralyzed from the waist down after he is seriously injured by his male co-star in this comedy skit.
  • In the South Park episode "You're Getting Old," the movie theater Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny go to is screening First Class.
• Romance on the Set:
  • Jennifer Lawrence and Nicholas Hoult began dating after appearing in the film and later split... only to rekindle upon shooting the sequel.
  • Also Michael Fassbender and Zoë Kravitz.
• Star-Making Role: This film solidifies Michael Fassbender as an A-list actor after getting acclaim from Inglourious Basterds. This also applies, to a lesser extent, with James McAvoy (whose career has had a much more gradual climb than most established actors), and Jennifer Lawrence to a certain degree; she already had an Oscar nomination for The Winter's Bone, but this and The Hunger Games really helped make her a household name.
• Those Two Actors: The CIA Agent who is the first to try and stop Shaw when he invades the CIA compound is Tony Curran, better known for playing Vincent van Gogh in Doctor Who, or being in the The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie, along with Jason "Azazel" Flemyng. Curran also played a knight in an episode of Primeval when Flemyng was in it, making this at least the third thing they're been in together.
• Throw It In!: Hugh Jackman's original line in the script was just "Fuck off." He improvised by saying "Go fuck yourself" instead, and the reactions of McAvoy and Fassbender to the different line are genuine. Amusingly enough, it does seem like both Jackman and McAvoy had forgotten about the improvisation while they were filming X-Men: Days of Future Past because Charles recalls Logan's rude reply as "Fuck off."
• Typecasting: The young Charles Xavier is the ultimate example of this for James McAvoy, who portrays a Wide-Eyed Idealist for the umpteenth time, plus he's frequently associated with Period Pieces and intellectuals. This role is a triple whammy for the actor.
• Uncredited Role: Josh Schwartz and Jamie Moss were the first two writers involved with the project, yet the WGA arbitration chose not to list them for story while providing one such credit for Sheldon Turner, whose script for an unproduced X-Men Origins: Magneto was never even touched by Bryan Singer and his cohorts.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Jamie Dornan, Jonas Armstrong, Matthew James Thomas, Patrick J. Adams and Boyd Holbrook screen-tested for the part of Charles Xavier before James McAvoy was cast. Holbrook would eventually go on to to portray Donald Pierce in Logan.
  • Andrew Garfield, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Eddie Redmayne, Frank Dillane and Jack Huston auditioned for the role of Erik Lehnsherr before the casting of Michael Fassbender. Garfield would later go to play Peter Parker in The Amazing Spider-Man Series, while Johnson would portray Pietro Maximoff and Kraven the Hunter in Avengers: Age of Ultron and Sony's Spider-Man Universe.
  • Benjamin Walker was initially chosen for Hank McCoy before Nicholas Hoult was cast, but dropped out of the project in order to star in Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson.
    • Jason Behr, Tom Parker and Taylor Lautner were also considered for Hank McCoy before the casting of Hoult.
  • Alice Eve was offered the part of Emma Frost before the casting of January Jones, but turned it down due to scheduling issues with She's Out of My League. She would go on to play Mary Walker in Iron Fist.
    • Amber Heard, Rosamund Pike, Abbie Cornish and Sarah Harding read for the role of Emma Frost as well before the casting of Jones.
  • Bryan Cranston and Colin Firth were approached for the part of Sebastian Shaw before Kevin Bacon was cast. Cranston turned down the offer due to scheduling conflicts with Drive.
  • Bryan Singer was originally approached to direct the film having previously directed X-Men and X2: X-Men United, but turned it down due to his previous commitments to Jack the Giant Killer.
  • This movie initially started out as a spin-off focusing almost exclusively on Magneto's backstory which was meant to be part of a planned X-Men Origins film series, but the idea was then discarded in favour of a prequel that also included Professor X as a major character (he only had a supporting role in the original Magneto script) along with his first class of mutants.
  • Sunspot was originally going to appear as a member of the team, but got cut due to being too expensive to render onscreen. This would've offset some of the complaints about the Monochrome Casting after the fates of Darwin and Angel. This idea ended up getting recycled for the next X-Men movie.
  • The film was originally going to have a complex psychic action sequence between Charles Xavier and Emma Frost, which ended up getting cut due to worries that it would seem too similar to Inception.
  • Azazel was originally going to look much more demonic◊.
  • Sebastian Shaw's role as the Big Bad was originally going to be Mister Sinister with Kevin Bacon playing the character, which explains why some of Shaw's powers in the film are actually Sinister's in the source material.
• You Sound Familiar: In the Latin American Spanish dub, the young Erik Lehnsherr is voiced by José Arenas, the original voice of Wolverine in the first movie; and Charles Xavier is voiced by Irwin Daayán, who voiced Quill in X-Men: The Last Stand.

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