Just last night I was commenting on Twitter, wondering aloud how that horrible early shot from X-MEN: FIRST CLASS ever made it through approvals at Fox. Turns out director Matthew Vaughn was wondering the same thing.
Vaughn called Slashfilm last night in damage control mode and tried to set the record straight: “I freaked out on them yesterday. I don’t know where the hell that came from. I don’t think it’s a Fox image. It’s not a pre-approved image. When I found out, I said, what the fuck is this shit, and Fox is running around trying to figure out what happened as well. I agree. It’s like a bad Photoshop, which maybe it was by someone. It didn’t reflect the movie. I was shocked when I saw it. I was like ‘Jesus Christ’…”
That is Vaughn saying the right things. And honestly, it’s very likely he didn’t see the image until it already leaked onto the web. But to say, “I don’t think it’s a Fox image” is misleading. It’s absolutely an image that came from Fox. It was provided to a number of websites earlier this week in conjunction with some early interviews with the cast. MSN accidentally posted it early and that’s how it leaked to the web. But it’s not fake. Some 14-year-old from Indiana didn’t come up with that while bored on a snow day. It’s real. Unfortunate and poorly done (to say the least) but it’s real.
Vaughn is correct though in saying, “What the fuck is this shit” and that he said that publicly, and with the same passion and vitriol that many of the fans did, is a good step in the right direction. To help ease the jangly nerves of the X-MEN fanbase, he also provided Slashfilm with two new photos – one of Michael Fassbender as Magneto (complete with classic helmet) and one of James McAvoy as Charles Xavier (pre-bald). Click on the image below to head to Slashfilm to read their entire chat with Vaughn and see both the images in hi-res.