Ok. It's time for me to quit bitching. First Class is gonna get released no matter how much I say it should not be. I can't stop it. I do have ideas though on how a proper prequel should have been done.
Lets get one thing out of the way. The 1960's. Why? Why does the film need to be set then. A film with Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Beast could have been accomplished as aprequel quite easily if it were set in the mid 70's or 80's. Sure we ld still have the issue of not having Ice man and Angel in there because they were already too young when they were introduced in the franchise. But still you would get 3 primary REAL First Class team mates.
Another problem I have with the film being a period piece is that it seems like other than being able to show Magneto and Professor X as young men, it seems like simply a style choice. And frankly the reasons that have given for this choice are crap. So what if the comic was created in that era. So were Spider-Man, the Hulk, Iron man, and a whole host of others. When it came time to turn those characters in to movies, the directors wisely chose to set the films inmodern times therefore making them relevant. And good comic book characters should be relevant because they and their stories are timeless. Also saying that the comic was created back then, really means very little to me becuse the comic that was created back then had a different cast. I'm really not saying all those this just to bitch about it. I think that seeing the original X-Men become who they are today is a far more compelling idea than just throwing some random different characters on the screen and having them be the original X-Men.
Also While I'm on here, I'll mention someone else who could use some fixing too. I did not expect to mention him, But Wolverine needs some big screen redemption. The way to do this would be to partially retcon X-Men Origins: Wolverine. How? Well thats easy. In the comics Wolverine was taken against his will to be a participant in the Weapon X program. In additionto memory issues he was already experiencing, the folks at Weapon X erased most of his memories and implanted false ones in his mind. Knowing this, I don't think it would be a stretch to have X-Men Origins: Wolverine be one of his false memories and have him discover his true origin in the next film. In that way, we would get to see a far bloodier origin and having the older film as a false memory would fit the character so well.
Of course, another option all together would be if Marvel aquired the franchise as a reboot. They could then build up the realtionship of Xavier and Magneto, the original X-Men, Wolverine and the eventually the Uncanny team and then bring them all together justlike how they are doing with the characters in The Avengers.