As if in answer to inferiorego’s concerns about the deluge of strange casting announcements relating to X-MEN: FIRST CLASS, Deadline’s reporting that Oliver Platt has also been cast in the movie. Who’s he playing? The Man in Black. Hm? Are the X-Men battling against frequent Stephen King villain Randall Flagg? Did he open a door revolving around the Dark Tower to enter this world? No no no… that’d be absurd. Obviously, the Xavier institute will be hiring country-music legend Johnny Cash to head its music department in this movie.
Sheesh… what’s there to say about this? This has had to be strangest casting roll-out I’ve ever seen for any comic movie. I thought it was a crackpot theory at first, but all of this is really pushing me to think that time travel’s going to factor in to this, somehow. The characters are cherry picked from all over the X-MEN chronology, Matthew Vaughn’s made some cryptic comments about this finding a creative way to be set in contemporary times by following STAR TREK’s example as a reboot… and now we’ve got two super-secret villains. The clues are there! Maybe Platt’s going to be a version of Nimrod or Bastion while Bacon will be Bolivar Trask. It wouldn’t be that big of coincidence, given how recent SECOND COMING was, and like I’ve said, the Sentinels are really the last part of the X-Mythos to be addressed. == TEASER ==
Anyway, Platt’s a character with a long history of dramatic roles. He most recently won a lot of accolades for playing my former professor, Bob Zelnick in FROST/NIXON. When I hear his name, I always think of his bizarre casting as an evil pro wrestler in that WCW lover letter, READY TO RUMBLE. The role that’ll probably interest you the most is that he voiced Hades in that direct-to-video WONDER WOMAN cartoon feature.
For those of you who’ve lost track, here’s the confirmed cast as of today…
- James McAvoy -- Prof. X
- Michael Fassbender – Magneto
- Alice Eve -- Emma Frost
- Nicholas Hoult – Beast
- Jennifer Lawrence – Mystique
- Caleb Landry Jones – Banshee
- Lucas Till – Havok
- Edi Gathegi - - Darwin
- Jason Fleming - - Azazel
- Rose Byrne - - Moira MacTaggert
- Kevin Bacon – Mystery Villain
Tom Pinchuk’s the writer of HYBRID BASTARDS! & UNIMAGINABLE. Order them on Amazon here & here.