X-Men: First Class, Matthew Vaughan cast Options

Here’s the first small image of the assembled cast for Matthew Vaughn‘s X-Men: First Class. Left to right, we see: Michael Fassbender as Magneto, Rose Byrne as Moira MacTaggert, January Jones as Emma Frost, Jason Flemyng as Azazel, Nicholas Hoult as Beast, Lucas Till as Havoc, Zoe Kravitz as Angel Salvadore, Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique, and James McAvoy as Charles Xavier.

http://www.slashfilm.com/cast-xmen-class/

Opinions?

I gotta agree with Eric and Cougar. It kind of ticks me off that we live in a country where 50% of the children are minorities, yet we have entire teams of superheros that are 90-100% Caucasian. And we wonder why kids aren't into comics like they used to be? Honestly I could find some enjoyment out of reading Spider-Man, even though he's a white character, because there were aspects of him that I could relate to. However, my favorite comic was New Mutants because it had a very diverse cast of people. Generation X was another favorite comic of mine because again, it had a very diverse cast of characters that reflected the America that I grew up in. Synch, M, Jubilee, and Skin were great additions to the X-verse, and their powers and backgrounds were interesting because they reflected our reality. X-Men also had such great non-white characters like Forge, Bishop, Dr. Reyes, Maggot, Thunderbird (the East Indian one), Psylocke, and of course Storm.

Again, that was in the 90s... All of that changed in the 00s. Marvel pretty much nixed ALL of its minority characters in the X-verse. Those that rose up on the lesser teams (and were actually moderately popular) were eventually erased from continuity. The recent characters of Surge, Armor, Dust, Prodigy, and Gentle were fricking AMAZING conceptually speaking. Marvel then set about to RUIN every last one of them. Now the X-Men teams are "whiter" than they ever have been. Even whiter than they were 20 years ago. Yeah, TWENTY YEARS AGO.

Again, we wonder why kids aren't into American comics anymore?

I really could do a whole thread about this topic.

As for the movie, X-Men+ Bryan Singer= Good Movie.

This post has been edited by MasonEasley: May 5 2011, 05:10 AM

I gotta agree with Eric and Cougar. It kind of ticks me off that we live in a country where 50% of the children are minorities, yet we have entire teams of superheros that are 90-100% Caucasian. And we wonder why kids aren't into comics like they used to be? Honestly I could find some enjoyment out of reading Spider-Man, even though he's a white character, because there were aspects of him that I could relate to. However, my favorite comic was New Mutants because it had a very diverse cast of people. Generation X was another favorite comic of mine because again, it had a very diverse cast of characters that reflected the America that I grew up in. Synch, M, Jubilee, and Skin were great additions to the X-verse, and their powers and backgrounds were interesting because they reflected our reality. X-Men also had such great non-white characters like Forge, Bishop, Dr. Reyes, Maggot, Thunderbird (the East Indian one), Psylocke, and of course Storm.

Again, that was in the 90s... All of that changed in the 00s. Marvel pretty much nixed ALL of its minority characters in the X-verse. Those that rose up on the lesser teams (and were actually moderately popular) were eventually erased from continuity. The recent characters of Surge, Armor, Dust, Prodigy, and Gentle were fricking AMAZING conceptually speaking. Marvel then set about to RUIN every last one of them. Now the X-Men teams are "whiter" than they ever have been. Even whiter than they were 20 years ago. Yeah, TWENTY YEARS AGO.

Again, we wonder why kids aren't into American comics anymore?

I really could do a whole thread about this topic.

As for the movie, X-Men+ Bryan Singer= Good Movie.

Mason, feel free to talk because I assure you, it is an important topic. I mean, one of the reasons, among many, for people mourning the loss of Dwayne McDuffie was because of how integral he was to an increased presence of minorities in comic books, and other media. And not just the presence of minorities, but rather develloped characters, not token characters to fill out a roster.
Whether it was the comics of Milestone, or his work on shows like JLU, or Static Shock, the guy went out of his way to make sure there were identifiable characters in everything he did.
We had characters of every ethnicity, or religion, such as Daisy lighting the Menorah or kinara, and sexuality, such as Virgils friend Rick being gay. Racism was mentioned in his work, but he did not beat the reader/ viewer over the head with it. Unfortunately, he often had to contend with editors/ producers/ network execs who did not like his ideas (inter racial relationships such as Daisy and Virgil in SS, or John Stewart and HawkGirl in Justice League. Producers nixed the idea, and he either had to split them up, or prevent the characters from dating by bringing in a new love interest. Dissappointing that TV is so racist, or that they think kids would be disturbed by that) but he fought on.
So when we lost McDuffie, we lost one of the strongest voices for minorities in the industry. Some people believed he was putting two fingers up to 'The Man', and basically telling white people to go to hell, that these comics were strictly for black/ latino/ hispanic etc But Dwayne was always the first one to say that this was entirely false, and that the comics were for everyone, and they merely wanted a greater presence of minority heroes and characters in comic books. This was no 'uprising', this was all about making characters that people could identify with, and relate to, who happened to be minorities.

When Dwayned died, we lost that voice. And who is left? Reggie Hudlin, who isn't a tenth of the writer Dwayne was, and has even less conviction to the characters.
Dwayne loved the medium, Reggie is there to get a paycheck.