X-Men: First Class To Be Set In The '60s And Other Mutant Bombshells

Bryan Singer, director of the two good X-Men movies and producer of the upcoming X-Men: First Class, bravely ventured into Harry Knowles' clammy nerd thunderdome yesterday and spilled a major amount of beans on the new mutant film. Suffice it to say, it's not just the casting of January Jones that's giving First Class a Mad Men-vibe.

As Singer revealed, the movie will be set in the early 1960s, with Kennedy in the White House and Martin Luther King, Jr. marching in the streets (how the students only seem to age five or six years in between this film and the first X-Men movie set in the late 90s is a question best left to theoretical physicists and the Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons). And though it's called First Class, it won't be based on the comic book by the same name, but go off on its road.

We'll see how James McAvoy's Professor X and Michael Fassbender's Magneto first meet and conceive of the X-Men, with McAvoy still walking around and sporting a lustrous head of hair. Further, while we won't be getting Cyclops and Jean Grey, we will be getting something closer to the old-school costumes from the comics, rather than the leather jumpsuits from the film. Which I'm happy about, but I imagine all of the S&M superhero enthusiasts just heaved a regretful sigh.

And that's not the only throwback in the movie; director Matthew Vaughn is evidently "technologically inspired" by the early James Bond technology, so this movie may have less jets underneath the basketball court and more exploding cufflinks. And much like Bond, X-Men: First Class will have more of a global feel to it, with shooting scheduled for England and the U.S. but with various other international locales, including Soviet Russia, being depicted.

Plus, the swinging sixties is a perfect backdrop for the Hellfire Club, where January Jones and Kevin Bacon as Emma Frost and Sebastian Shaw respectively, ply their sexy, Victorian era LARP-y trade. I'm just excited to see how villainous Bacon can be in a satin waistcoat and breeches

It seems like Singer & company have really set out to do a Silver Age X-Men story, rather than just use the X-Men name and characters to squeeze out a few more bucks of us comics geeks. While having the film set in the 1960s could either make the civil rights undertones a little too blatant, or worse, devolve into sub-Austin Powers camp, I think we're in good hands. If there's one guy I trust with the X-Men, it's Bryan Singer.

· So Bryan Singer just called regarding Matthew Vaughn's X-MEN: FIRST CLASS... I'm quite excited now. [AICN]