When Ian McKellen comes on screen for the first time in X-Men 3, we see him 20 years younger through the magic of modern technology. Both he and Patrick Stewart we given extensive make-up jobs and had digital effects applied to them to appear much younger… rather than getting other actors to play the younger versions of themselves.
Since the first sneak peaks of that scene came out, a lot of people have wondered if they would actually get Ian McKellen back to play Magneto in the spinn-off prequel. I personally said they’d never do that… but it looks like I may have been wrong! Well… sorta. The bood folks over at Comicbookmovie give us this:
Ian McKellen will play Magneto in the X-Men spin-off movie, according to John Bruno, X-Men: The Last Stand FX supervisor by way of Superhero Hype. The movie has been touted as a prequel/origin story so it’s likely that McKellen would portray the mutant at his present age, flashbacking to the past, rather than as a young man.
This was borne out by comments made by outgoing Marvel Studios exec Avi Arad who talked with iF Magazine. The Magneto movie, he said, would be “starting with a younger version. It’s the story of Magneto’s life, and it will span some years.”
So it’s a little unclear what is being said here. To me it looks like McKellen will indeed be in the Magneto spinn-off… but that he won’t play the younger version of himself. This makes sense to me.
Yes, the effects on Xavier and Magneto in the begining of X-Men 3 looked amazing… but to do that sort of effect through an whole film would be mind blowingly hard, and VERY VERY expensive. So I still don’t think that’s what will happen. But it sure would be good to see him in there as himself at his current age!
I think that it would be great to keep Ian to play the role and let the magic of modern technology make him look younger. If you were to get just some random person to play the part, the charicteristics wont be the same and it would good to have ian so then it can keep the same facial characteristics as well. It would be good if the film was to go back to when he was a boy like in x-men 1, i liked that and it showed the start of who he was. haha imagine Ian’s face put onto a boys face hahahaha now that would be funny!
This is good news indeed. I agree that the cost of keeping him looking young for the spin off would be too high to be feasable but a flashback movie could be good if done correctly. I’m just curious who they’d get to play him as a young man. I’m not sure there are any younger versions of Ian out there than could carry the role as well as he has.
When Ian dies, he should be risen from the grave and made to act for all time. Seriously. I’m going to cry when Gandalf buys the farm.
All I care about is seeing more Magneto! His story pretty much ties in with Charles Xaviers, and a story such as Magnetos has a shitload to offer to fans and movie goers alike. And the fact we will get to see more of Ian McKellen, BEAUTIFUL!!!!
Just to inform about a simular film. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button will as far as I know use this technique thoughout the film.
Not sure if it will acctually be the same technique. Put I have seen a screen-test of mr.Pitt and a face mapping software so they could acctually replace his face with cgi to make him older and younger then what he is.
This magneto film is great, but I was looking foward to seeing what happens after X3 (They are not going to stop at 3). The only thing I hate about prequels is, you already know how things end up. But to me the action will be alot more interesting.
I hope they do the prequel then at the end film show Magneto getting up from the chess table, he was at in x3, walk to the sidewalk by a street. Then a truck passes by, blocking us from seeing him, then moments later the truck goes flying into the screen….
Then you see the X4 label coming soon.
I know kinda lame but it just a thought
I don’t want to see some dude doing a McKellan impersonation. I want the genuine article.
It would be so awesome to have McKellen for the current time and have some else playing the younger Magneto, whats a Megneto movie without McKellen? I think in my opinion that would be a nice touch if the Magento Spin-Off was set just before X-Men the first movie. So you can have Magneto talking about how his going to rage aw war against the humans and how he become to hate humans and we could go back revisiting the events that made him the way he is and turning his back against Charles.