Before X-Men: First Class came out, it started out as a lame Muppet Babies origin story, then there were rumors that it was rushed and behind schedule, and everyone was basically predicting a disaster. Then it came out, and other than January Jones, it was actually pretty good. Many people credit that to Matthew Vaughn, who came into the film having directed Layer Cake, Stardust, and Kick-Ass. Well the good news is that he’s back for the sequel.

Fox has just closed a deal with Matthew Vaughn to come back and direct the sequel to X-Men: First Class, with Simon Kinberg writing the script and Bryan Singer back as producer. [Deadline]

The last one had Ashley Miller and Zack Stentz (Thor) and Jane Goldman and Vaughn (Kick-Ass) writing the script, while Simon Kinberg previously wrote the Ratner X-Men, Jumper, Sherlock Holmes, and that upcoming McG movie, This Means War, which makes him perhaps not the most promising-sounding candidate. But it’s super hero movie, so it’ll probably get six rewrites anyway. In any case, the good news is that Matthew Vaughn will be directing the next X-Men movie. The bad news is that Matthew Vaughn will be directing the next X-Men movie, and not something potentially more badass. It will also be interesting to see where they go with titles. I’m assuming the Rambo-esque “X-Men First Class Part 2″ will be the play here, but with all these reboots and origin stories and sequels of prequels of origin story reboots, these things are going to need footnotes before long. Rise of the Planet of the Apes Part 2 dash 1 to the power of Spider-Man. X-Man Up to Tha Streets.

Michael F. Assbender, assbending like a boss

X-Men: Born This Way

X-Men: First Class is about one obnoxious subplot away from being the movie Watchmen always wanted to be, the huge-budget, over-the-top superhero epic that has as much insight into the human condition as it does spandex and… grunting. Kick-Ass director Matthew Vaughn manages to turn a Muppet Babies concept with a disastrous marketing campaign (HURRR, DIAGONAL ORIGIN STORY!) into something a lot more ambitious than your basic retread of the superhero story. And that’s good, because X has as its source material a layered allegory for the Civil Rights movement, whereas, say, Thor was mostly an excuse to watch a buff guy hit sh*t with the hammer (though Brett Ratner still can’t tell the difference). Look, I was as surprised as you are.  DON’T FIGHT IT! YOU’VE BEEN ASSBENT!

X opens in flashback, telling two parallel backstories. One starring over-enunciating James McAvoy as smarmypants overichiever Charles Xavier; the other, ass-bending Michael F. Assbender (Michael Fassbender, to other people) as hard-knocks Polish concentration camp orphan Erik Lehnsherr. One part of this supposed origin story that’s never explained is Xavier’s British accent, which he already has at the age of 10 when we catch up with him at his palatial estate in, uh… Westchester, New York.  Did rich kids speak in British accents in the 40s?  Because JFK was a rich kid in the 40s and I’m pretty sure I heard him call a country “Cuber.”  In any case, rich Xavier is already a powerful psychic, while penniless Lehnsherr possesses mutant genes that make him far less Jewy than his parents.  Later he learns he can control metal when Kevin Bacon shoots his mother.  (That’s Kevin Bacon, Nazi Scientist, by the way, before he morphs into Kevin Bacon, international playboy — but I’m getting ahead of myself).  As Erik discovers during a mother-murdered-in-front-of-him induced rage, his ability to attract metal is directly related to the intensity of his emotions.  Why, if only he had one person on whom to pin all his most intense hatreds! And another who could literally enter his mind and help him sort out his feelings! Why, all that’d be left is some giant metal sh*t to control.

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Matthew Vaughn and 20th Century Fox’s X-Men: First Class opens in just a few weeks (June 4th, to be exact).  New clips from the film, once rumored to be a behind-schedule disaster, are now coming fast and furious (as I’ve been known to myself).  The latest centers on Hank McCoy, aka Beast, played by Nicholas Hoult, who shows off his mutations for the first time, to the instant pantie moistening of Mystique, played by the lovely Jennifer Lawrence.  Oh yeah, baby, you turned on by a man with toes on his feet?  What say we go somewhere more private and I show you the meaning of “prehensile.”

Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men: First Class opens in less than a month (June 4th) and today YahooMovies has a new short clip.  The clip is called “Magic Trick” and it features James McAvoy’s Professor Xavier and Jennifer Lawrence’s Mystique demonstrating their powers before skeptical CIA agents McTaggert (Rose Byrne) and Stryker (you may remember him as Brian Cox in X2, or Danny Huston in Wolverine, though hopefully you blocked that one out).  Call me crazy, but I think the old “wanna see a magic trick?” loses a bit of its luster when your trick is turning a hot young girl into a fat white guy, when the same opener in The Dark Knight ended with someone getting stabbed in the eye with a pencil.  Pencil stabbings > fat white guys, if you’re keeping score at home.

What’s McAvoy’s mutation supposed to be, over-enunciating?

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With the opening now less than a month away, X-Men: First Class just released a couple of new posters, and it looks like whoever’s recovering heroin-addict nephew they gave this job to hasn’t been fired yet (GRRR, LENS FLARES! POPOUTS! BLURRY BACKGROUNDS! PHOTOSHOP FILTER!). They also released three new character trailers, which thankfully look a lot better than the posters, which is good because I wasn’t looking forward to watching this with my head cocked sideways like a perplexed puppy the whole time (though I’m sure that’d be adorable).

The trailers are for The Banshee (Caleb Landry Jones from Friday Night Lights), Havok (Lucas Til), and Beast (Nicholas Hoult — the kid from About a Boy). They all seem to be various types of puberty metaphors.  Banshee can fly by screaming and making his voice crack, Havok can kill people with his violent hip thrusting (THAT’S MY MOVE!), and when Beast meets a woman, his palms sprout hair and his balls turn blue.   And if that weren’t bad enough, he’ll eventually grow up to be Kelsey Grammer.  In any case, it’s nice to see they focused on these guys and not the lesser-known mutants, like the guy who can morph into a turkey sandwich but not back again, or the one who can see through walls, but only while standing in a puddle of his own urine.

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