Corona | Coming Attractions

Fox gives us mutant-specific trailers to introduce us to four gifted youngsters.

I love it when studios give full-court presses to genre films, especially comic book films, because not only does it allow them to get inventive, every new PR push gets more images and information in front of newcomers who just might see in these characters what we do. The second trailer explained a bit about Magneto, and now we have four more, character-specific trailers to delve deeper into the team.

So thanks to 20th Century Fox for giving us these character trailers for four mutants showcased in the upcoming X-Men: First Class. With less than a month until First Class’s June 3 opening, MTV and Fox put up these first looks at Banshee, Beast, Havok and Mystique.

Not only is it nice to see a different trailer for each character, it’s great that Fox is spending the time to introduce people to mutants they’ve probably never heard of before, like Banshee and Havok. Fox could have played it safe and pushed only the big-name mutants that were the stars of the previous X-Men films, but instead they’re showing us the variety of students at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters.

I love that director Matthew Vaughn (Kick Ass) has cast some powerful actors in the film: James McAvoy (Professor Charles Xavier), Oliver Platt (The Man In Black), January Jones (Emma Frost) and Jennifer Lawrence (Mystique). Really digging McAvoy’s Xavier, the quiet work he does in the Havok trailer is great. The full head of hair still throws me, though.

So without further delay, ladies and gentlemen, meet your classmates!

Banshee
Caleb Landry Jones (Jimmy Adler on Friday Night Lights) plays the brash young Irishman with a sonic set of lungs who went from the X-Men’s foe to teammate in the comics.
 

Beast
One of the original X-Men introduced way back in 1963, brilliant furry scientist Hank McCoy was played by Kelsey Grammar in his brief appearance in X-Men: The Last Stand. Now it looks like we get to see Beast (Nicholas Hoult from the UK’s Skins TV show) before the fur -- for a moment, anyway.
 

Havok
Lucas Till (Hannah Montana: The Movie) plays Alex Summers, who is a guest of the state when the film opens. I always preferred Alex’s brother Scott (Cyclops) in the comics, but this trailer could make me a Havok fan.
 

Mystique

Jennifer Lawrence (Oscar-nominated for Winter’s Bone, just cast in The Hunger Games) plays this a less shifty version of the shapeshifter, who earlier played by Rebecca Romijn (wearing blue body paint and little else) in the X-Men film trilogy.