Christopher Nolan might’ve pulled an “inception” and retrieved (or planted?) an idea from the mind of Matthew Vaughn and his X-MEN: FIRST CLASS crew. The KICK-ASS director recently told the LA Times that he’s scrapped a dozen page sequence from the new mutant movie after watching INCEPTION this past weekend. Apparently, the scenes of spinning hallways and gravity-warping chaos bore too strong a similarity to an extended “psy-war” scene that he'd already had scripted and storyboarded.  Now, he’s tasking his writers to get back to their desks and cook up something new.

The LA Times suggests that this scene might’ve recalled some classic storylines of Xavier fighting on the psychic/astral plane. If that’s the case, then it opens the obvious-in-retrospect possibility that the Shadow King will factor into this movie. You’ll recall that Prof. X first encountered this evil telepath, Amahl Farouk, on the streets of Cairo where he was leading a street gang which a young Storm was part of. I could easily see this movie riffing on that plotline to bring Ororo into the first class (as is probably going to happen) while changing enough details to streamline it into the movies’ continuity. One such change, I imagine, could shift the King’s real world incarnation from an obese Egyptian crime lord to somebody who could be played by... Kevin Bacon, perhaps? Think about it. It could work. == TEASER ==

Anyway, here’s how Vaughn broke his bittersweet experience down…

"I saw 'Inception,' which I loved… But my heart sank when I saw that a few of the ideas we had were up [on the screen]. So it's either leave it in and look as if you're copying or change things. We completely ripped out about 12 pages of the script and the storyboards."

You know, the internet makes these kind of things a lot more public than they would’ve been in the past. I wonder if the Wachowski Brothers went through a similar dilemma when the first BLADE movie had a bullet-time, bullet-dodging scene while the first MATRIX was still in production.

Tom Pinchuk’s the writer of HYBRID BASTARDS! & UNIMAGINABLE. Order them on Amazon here & here.

lol yay inception

When I was dozing during Inception, I couldn't help but think about how similar the whole concept is to the astral plane in X-Men.
Similarly, I expected people to knock on Watchmen for having such a similar ending to The Dark Knight (even though obviously, Watchmen's idea came first)....

That reminds me, I still need to get round to seeing Inception for the second time.

Why stop with a dozen pages? I honestly don't know what to think of this movie, the fact that he's blaming another movie (which I've only heard great things about) so he can rewrite his own....sounds like a bad excuse O_o

Check this out ONLY if you've seen Inception. 
  
  

Another excuse for the delay of this film not good. Though tbh I'm not particularly looking forward to this film

I've wanted Shadow King as the villain since the beginning and knew it would work to tie in Xavier's run-in with Storm ;)  I don't see Bacon in that role though....if we get a taste of the Brotherhood, maybe he could be Mastermind....I think that'd fit him better.
 
I still think they should chuck out Madrox, Banshee, Havok & Frost and include Wanda and Pietro instead so we get a taste of the first incarnation of the Brotherhood along with Magneto's paternal secrecy...then maybe they could shift into the Avengers franchise. (i know, too much to ask, but a boy can dream)

I'm concerned that the scene in question is going to make everyone who hasn't read this think 'he clearly just ripped off Inception there'. But yay, psy-war!

I read rumors about Kevin Bacon playing Shadow King. I guess they're confirmed now.

Here's an idea  
Leave out Wolverine  
Now we'll see how much of the movie has to be rewritten if wolverine was intended to be in the movie

"lol yay inception"

"Check this out ONLY if you've seen Inception. 
  
  

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

  

 
  

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

  

"

Ha!  I so called the possibility of the Shadow King being in that !

i love X-men but i know this movie is gonna suck and its so depressing when i think about it 

They need to get their $#!* together with this film or let Marvel Studios take it over

Inception was an awesome movie!
and now I love it even more, if it's making the creators of First Class think... which I hear is dangerous!

NOOO rip it off if it makes your movie good RIP IT OFF i already have just over 1% faith in this movie beeing good only thanks to Mat Vaughn and 99% certainty that it will suck since this is coming from Fox.

I'm glad he had to rip out those pages.  If there is going to be a battle on the astral plane, then all sense of space and time should be distorted - down is up, left is right, and so on.  For any of us who have read the issues with a psy-battle, then we all know that it should take place somewhere better than a hallway.

I'm just glad there's going to be a decent battle between two psychics at all,  the pheonix vs prof x battle in the third x-men wasn't that great IMO.

i just watch inception and it was great. matthew vaughn should think of many awesome ideas to top inception

Hey it would be cool if Factor 3 was in the 1st class movie and they could tie in Banshee

This doesn't restore any of my faith in this project, but the Shadow King may be interesting.

I am sure this happens all the time, having the change stuff because someone else thought of it and put it in their movie too.  with Pixar's Incredibles out, the the FF movie had to change things.  Not sure what they had to change or if those things would have made it better.  I think they were just a few effects here and there.

this does nothing for me, this film is not going to be good. fact

I wouldn't mind seeing another trippy scene like that in another movie, especially an X-Men one.

I'm pretty indifferent at this point. Unless there is some announcement that they are revamping the move to actually follow the X-men: First Class storyline I really don't think this is shaping up to be very good.
 
I am however hoping to be proven wrong about all this and the movie actually turns out to be great. But I doubt it....

"They need to get their $#!* together with this film or let Marvel Studios take it over "

I think people hate too much. Are the movies good representations of the original stories, no they're not. But the X-Men have way too much history to compact into a first movie, and that's what they had to do to keep it going. NONE of the X-Men movies were terrible. Wolverine Origins was pushing it a little and X3 had kind of a lame storyline, but still they were fairly good movies. My hopes: the X-Men First Class film follows the mythos of these X-Men movies, then a few years after that Marvel gets the X-Men back and reboots, pleasing the more old fashioned fans.
 
Personally the first class isn't that interesting anyways...*Prepares to be bombarded with hate mail and heavy objects*

Oh, no! He'd already storyboarded it? Poor Matthew Vaughn, my heart aches for him.
 
Hey, he did Stardust? Sweet, I loved that movie.

so i guess this is the confirmation we required for us acknowledge the presence of the unfathomable Shadow King in the much awaited (?) reboot (?). I heard somewhere overseas that Vaughn intends to treat this as such - a reboot

I just hope they don"t mess it up....

lol, as if x-men first class is going to come anywhere close to being good enough to be compared to Inception.  ::rolls eyes::

"Inception was an awesome movie! and now I love it even more, if it's making the creators of First Class think... which I hear is dangerous! "

I am trying SO hard to be optimistic about this project...at this point I'll be happy if I don't find myself thinking I should be watching it in a spaceship with a pair of sarcastic robots.

RIP-OFFS!!!!!

Entering into people's minds chemically in teams is totally different than Prof. X doing his thing. They should have just continued to develop what they had.

Wait.......now Shadow King's name is being tossed in the ring!? Too many characters. Too many rumors. I smell a bomb. : (

Finally saw Inception last night.  Fantastic!  I would not begrudge anyone copying that movie!!!

I would've liked to see what they did in Inception happen a bit in the X-movie

The Matrix also borrowed gothic rooftop sets- literally (they were the same sets)- from Dark City... another fiction about a chosen one who had to uncover his hidden powers to fight a shadowy conspiracy of agents who kept the world asleep in an illusory world.  Inception itself could be said to have been influenced heavily by films like The Matrix, 13th Floor, etc. and rumor has it that it strongly parallels a french film (although Nolan claims he saw it only after the film was completed). 
 
At a certain point, you need to believe in your creation for what it is and accept that not everything about it is novel- you will be inspired or you will be second- and stick to your vision rather than caring whether some in the audience might think you are copying (heck, if you're using a world populated by characters you did not create and relying on storylines inspired by past ones written by others, I imagine the ship on originality has sailed, why be so insecure?). 
 
Now there is a certain risk of copyright or trademark infringement... but unless it's a shot for shot duplication and the whole of the story copies the original (and even then all you need is a transformative twist and you're in the clear and I think a school of super powered mutants qualifies as a twist) you're not at risk. 
 
Matt Vaughn's lack of confidence doesn't exactly inspire any in me.

I love the Shadow King but this movie is getting cluttered