Bryan Singer Reveals 'X-Men: First Class' Details

Call me a cynic, but I just haven’t been able to muster up any real excitement about Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men: First Class recently. Yes, based on what we saw with Kick-Ass, Vaughn is a capable director when it comes to comic book adaptations. And, yes, the fact that X-Men and X2: X-Men United director Bryan Singer is returning to produce the forthcoming prequel inspires some confidence. But let’s be honest: half of the X-Men movies have been utter garbage (X-Men: The Last Stand, X-Men Origins: Wolverine), and if we look back at the original two films, they haven’t aged as well as we might have hoped. So why should we, comic book nerds, really care about a prequel film in a franchise that we only kinda, sorta care about in 2010?

Well, Singer himself recently gave a few reasons for us to start paying attention when he called Ain’t It Cool News’ Harry Knowles. Here are a few of the details Singer touched on:

• The film takes place in the 1960s, grounding it firmly in the civil rights movement.
• We’ll get to see Professor Xavier (James McAvoy) with hair, before he is bound to a wheelchair. Both he and his eventual nemesis Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender) will be in their late 20s.
• January Jones and Kevin Bacon are playing Emma Frost and Sebastian Shaw, meaning that the Hellfire Club will play a major role in the film.
• X-Men: First Class will have an “international” feel, giving it what Knowles describes as a “James Bond vibe.”
• The costumes will be “far more comic bookish.” Does that mean Cyclops, Jean Grey and co. will be donning the old-school blue and yellow tights? Stay tuned, True Believers.

X-Men: First Class starts filming on August 31. For the full story, click here.

You Didn’t Think We’d Really Seen the Last of Rambo, Did You?

Harry Knowles over at Ain’t It Cool News reports that Sylvester Stallone is readying yet another Rambo movie called Rambo V: The Savage Hunt. Is this a good thing? Well, if you’re like me and loved the hell out of 2008’s blood-soaked Rambo, then you might be interested in what ol’ Sly has in mind for John Rambo’s fifth outing on the silver screen. What’s really fascinating—or damning, depending on what you think a Rambo movie should be—is that this movie apparently introduces a sci-fi element to the series. No, it’s not Rambo in Space. But, then again, I’ve heard worse ideas.

Set in the Pacific Northwest, the film teams Rambo with special ops soldiers to track down an escaped U.S. military experiment, which Stallone describes in a voicemail to Knowles as a “feral beast” that is an “amalgamation of fury and intelligence and pure, unadulterated rage.” So he's fighting monsters now?

I’m not quite sure if this will work for a lot of people, but after Rocky Balboa and Rambo, Stallone seems to have a handle on his characters these days. However, as over-the-top as the last three hyper-violent Rambo films were, they were at least grounded in something resembling reality. This sounds a bit like Rambo Vs. Predator.

Click here to read more about the film and to listen to Stallone’s voicemail in its entirety.