THE HOUSE OF MUTANTS (PART ONE)
Director Matthew Vaughn decided to feature only a handful of mutants and has a little tweaks around the appearance of certain mutants. Here are the mutants!
Dr. Henry Philip “Hank” McCoy (Beast)
He is played by young British actor Nicholas Hoult (About a Boy, Clash of the Titans). Beast possesses superhuman abilities with superior strength, agility, stamina and endurances. Beast sees himself as a curse but acknowledge his appearance to fight for social rejection. He is later part of X-Men.In First Class, you will see him been in human form before his permanent transformation at the later stage. In an interview with Screen Rant, Hoult described his character as been “very intelligent, obviously and creates great inventions.” Instead of placing Beast as a politician or as the Mutant Ambassador for the United States Government in the trilogy, the early days examined his role as a scientist. Here’s what Hoult has to say about his character:
"He’s very intelligent, obviously, and creates great inventions. But there’s also this side of him where you have this conflict of wanting to be normal and wanting to fit in… And then there’s also the side, once he becomes the Beast. There’s a Jeckyll and Hyde aspect, where he’s scared of what he’s capable of. In ['X-Men: The Last Stand'], Beast was a politician, and he’s been in this place for a long time. In ['X-Men: First Class'] he’s young and he’s a scientist. And when he changes, that comes with quite a bit of anger and embarrassment."
On the surface, Beast is a most warm, carefree and happiest among all the X-Men. However, Beast suffered persecutions just like other to become one important man in the future. Learn his struggles in The First Class.
Raven Darkholme (Mystique)
She is played by young American actress Jennifer Lawrence (Winter’s Bone). Mystique’s abilities include shapeshifting, superhuman agility, ageless and a skilled combatant. She is later part of Brotherhood of Mutants.In First Class, she is already able to shapeshift into a fearless scaly, blue skin and yellow eye mutant. In the movie, she is also seems to be the love interest of Beast, in those early days. Taking the role of Mystique requires Lawrence to endure an eight hours to apply the full-body makeup to turn her into Mystique and another three and a half to remove it. In the interview with Yahoo Movie Blog, she was first unfamiliar with the role and that has nearly cost her the part.
"I realized I was doing it completely wrong, and I was like, 'Why have they been calling me back? (The original Mystique was) kind of cold and cool and snakelike... I was doing my Raven kind of sweet and teenybopper, because I didn't know what else to do."
Angel Salvadore (Tempest)
She is played by Zoe Kravitz (The Brave One, No Reservations), the daughter of legendary American rocker Lenny Kravitz. Angel Salvadore is relatively a new character that only debuted in the New X-Men comics in 2001. Tempest’s abilities including winged flight with sonic vibrational capacities, insectoid physiology and acid spat. It is relatively unknown if she will demonstrates some of these abilities in the new movie. She eventually becomes part of X-Men.In First Class trailer, she appeared to be able to spread her wings and making some supersonic vibration. In that scene, it appeared that James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender are in the same room too. For that scene, she explained to Splashpage:
"It's really funny. They come to find me, knowing about my mutation, and I'm working at a go-go club. I don't know what they're there for, so I take them in back for a private dance and then we show each other our powers"
In the comic books, Tempest eventually lost her mutant powers and had them replaced by technologically recreated abilities. She eventually able to generate ice from her left hand and fire from the right hand, an ability we might expect to see later in the film or possibly in the sequels.
Sean Cassidy (Banshee)
He is played by the American young actor Caleb Landry Jones (The Social Network, Friday Night Lights). Banshee’s abilities include superhuman hearing, sonic screams, flight and sonic energy lances. He is part of X-Men.In First Class, there is some issue revolving the casting of an American to take on the Irish characters. Irish in origin, the character has been Americanized to adapt to the story. Although Banshee debuted in the X-Men comics quite sometime from the rest, the movie will tackle on his teenager’s day. When asked by Splashpage, Jones thought that his audition was “absolutely terrible”. When asked what makes Banshee such a cool character, he replied:
"His naively destructive personality sprinkled with wit."
----- END OF PART TWO -----
For the third part, we shall be looking at the rest of the mutants characters - Azazel, Riptide, Darwin and Havok. Stay tune! Here is the awesome second feature trailer in case you have not watched it:
New Awesome Trailer:
