Most fans loved the casting decision director Matthew Vaughn took when he chose James McAvoy to be his Professor Xavier in the new X-Men: First Class movie. Now, until we get a glimpse or footage of the young actor’s performance, fans won’t know how it compares to the Professor Xavier, Patrick Stewart gave us in the original X-Men trilogy. Here’s what McAvoy said about that challenge.
The Scottish actor seems up for the challenge, confident enough to joke, “I’m basically going to try and bury Patrick’s performance.”
He followed up with more serious discussion of his approach, how he’d like to link his Xavier to Stewart’s by the end of First Class. Hit the jump for his precise comments, in both print and video form.McAvoy explained what he hopes to accomplish over the course of the film in an interview with MTV:
“I think the fun about these films, when you go back and you either reboot or do a prequel, is you get to see how people became who they are. That means that you have to do them differently and by the end of the movie you have to do them the same way. The interesting journey is what happens to them, what changes them, what makes them evolve — not just mutate, but emotionally and psychologically evolve.
I would suggest by the end of the movie and the start of the next movie, it’ll be more like what Patrick does. Or maybe not. Maybe it will still be in a period of flux, if there is a new movie.”
Makes sense to me. I believe that this guy is up for the challenge, and that he will give a good performance of the character set in that time. I totally agree with his take on making it his own and then slowly changing the character to resemble more and more Stewart’s performance/state. Also, notice that he refers to possibly being more sequels. This bodes well for the X-Men fans out there. This guy is just going to get better and better. Fassbender made an excellent choice here.
What do you guys think? You like him as Professor X? What would you like to see in his performance?
