Last year’s ‘X-Men: First Class’ was generally well received featuring fantastic performances from James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender. The film managed a difficult balance with a large number of characters and a script bloated with events and subplots crammed into 130 minutes, and while the film isn’t without its problems it is an achievement that the final result isn’t an incoherent mess. The film restored some much needed credibility to the franchise which while still financial successful, had been lacking in quality with the previous two instalments.
Fox have announced that Matthew Vaughn is indeed set to return for a sequel in the quasi reboot/prequel X-Men franchise, including Bryan Singer back as a producer and with Simon Kinberg developing a script. Kinberg wasn’t involved with First Class and his previous films are somewhat mixed having worked on ‘Mr and Mrs Smith’, ‘X-Men: The Last Stand’, ‘Jumper’ and ‘Sherlock Holmes’.
News of a sequel is certainly welcomed, however with some reservation, had the promise of at least one more film been a certainty it would have allowed Singer and Vaughn to manage events in the first film a little more patiently. How this might impact Vaughn’s involvement with ‘Kick Ass 2’ also remains to be seen, he is currently attached as a producer to the project but not director, with ‘First Class 2’ seeming almost a sure thing, it’s likely we’ll see that before ‘Kick Ass 2’.
