Riding on his 2010 success, Kick-Ass, Vaughn brought in different writers (those who also put together Thor after working on TV's Fringe and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) to create an edginess and tone not seen in the series. He was originally supposed to replace Singer for X-Men: Last Stand five years ago but was bumped by Brett Ratner (the Rush Hour series). The second was Matthew Vaughn's "return" as a director to the series. Bringing back Singer as a producer and story contributor was the first step because the decision was then made to go with a 1960's-set origin story for the whole series, intending to set things right and wash out the bad vibes of the last two films. The glimmer of hope came in the open-minded creativity that was brought together for X-Men: First Class. Rushed and passed through too many writers, X-Men: First Class ended up with a smaller budget, a predominantly unknown cast with no marketable stars, an extremely short ten-month shooting schedule for an effects-based movie, and terrible pre-release marketing buzz. The hitch was Magneto and Professor X are so linked as former-friends-turned-opponents that you couldn't have one without the other. At first, it was supposed to be X-Men Origins: Magneto, a prequel origin story for Ian McKellan's great villain to play alongside the Wolverine one. Not much hope was given for X-Men: First Class. A certain profitable bunch of people were going to come out to the box office regardless of the effort. Fox wasn't going to give up on one of its cash cows because X-Men was still a franchise name. Nobody minded the Hugh Jackman part, but hated how they portrayed and changed the story around him. The same can be said with X-Men Origins: Wolverine from two short years ago. The third movie of the highly-successful 20th Century Fox series, X-Men: The Last Stand, rubbed fans the wrong way after series director and braintrust, Bryan Singer, bolted to update Superman at Warner Brothers. That's the incredible surprise from X-Men: First Class. Finally, not many make themselves superior to everything that came before it. Not many try so hard to fix the bad convoluted details of past works, yet still offer so many familiar homages to those very same past works. Not many ignore previous movies altogether in an effort to tell its own new origin story. Not many sequels or reboots go backwards in time to end up adding new characters. Though, X-Men: First Class is a horse of a different color. The summer of sequels and reboots continues.
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