(Yes, I know TDF is turning into the Michael Fassbender Show, but bear with me, fangirls. I’m working my way through this crush.)
Michael Fassbender sat down with Sarah Lyall of the New York Times and talked X-Men: First Class.
Some highlights:
To prepare for the part Mr. Fassbender steeped himself in the Marvel comic books on which the films are based. His character, Erik/Magneto, a Jewish Holocaust survivor who has spent the postwar years hunting down and taking revenge on extant Nazis, is angry and restless, Malcolm X to Charles’s Martin Luther King, he said.
“The thing about this guy is that he doesn’t trust anyone,” he said. “He thinks humans are a race not to be trusted. He believes that anyone who’s not with him is against him.”
Erik’s restless preference for action over compromise suits Mr. Fassbender, said Matthew Vaughn, the movie’s director.
“He thinks like a boxer, trains like a boxer,” Mr. Vaughn said in a telephone interview. “Erik needs to be strong and vulnerable at the same time, which is a hard thing to pull off. But Michael does it in spades. He totally inhabits his character, so that when he’s doing bad things, you don’t mind.”
He also radiates serious attitude, said Mr. McAvoy, his co-star. “I think Matthew wanted the character to be a little bit of a Bond type, really stylish, really cool, and Michael does that,” Mr. McAvoy said. “He brings in a sense of menace, an underlying sense of danger, to the role.”
The more I hear about this movie, the less anxious I am that they’re going to screw it up. Not only does it seem like Matthew Vaughn, the director, is really devoted to the material, but Fassbender and McAvoy both seem to be truly interested in their characters, and are devoted to bringing really good versions of Charles and Erik to life.
In “X-Men: First Class,” which opens on June 3, he plays Erik, a mutant who can generate and control magnetic fields. A prequel to the earlier films in the series, the movie shows the first meeting of the mutants, including Erik, who later becomes Magneto, and Charles, a k a Professor X, played by James McAvoy. (After that, at least judging from the trailer, they save the world from nuclear annihilation during the Cuban missile crisis and become implacable enemies).
Way to do some research on the story, Ms. Lyall.
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