X-Men First Class was released on DVD last Friday, September 9th on US, and
Ain't It Cool News got the chance to talk with the Visual Effects living legend John Dykstra.
Beaks: X-Men: First Class actually began shooting a year ago this month, so it seems you had a pretty tight time frame to finish the effects. When were you officially brought on to work on the film?
John Dykstra: Good question. Actually, I think I was brought on in June, but it was an incredibly collapsed schedule. It was really tough. I think that one of the key elements to it was that, in an odd way, because we were working in a constrained time frame, everyone sort of concentrated their efforts. I don’t mean that they worked harder, but they tended to be more focused. It’s funny because I was just talking to somebody about Mathew Vaughn as a director, and interestingly enough he had both a tactical approach as well as a strategic approach, which is not always the case. One would like to think that all directors have a strategic approach, but often times when you get into tight constraints like this film has, one or the other suffers; either performances suffer because they feel pressured to rush through things, or… because they go ahead and take the time that they think they need to make each scene work, the overall suffers because they don’t get enough of a broad cross section. It was really weird. It was a very difficult film at the beginning as we were launching into it, but as it proceeded and we got through principle photography - which was no mean feat - and into the post phase of the film and the editing phase of the film, it went very smoothly. I actually was very, very concerned about that, and it turned out, I think, very well. The film doesn’t suffer for it: that’s what I liked most about it.
Beaks: When you came on the film was there a particular challenge that jumped out at you?
John Dykstra: Oh yeah, there were plenty of challenges. I mean, how many characters have we got? And we’ve got the history, we’ve got the genesis of these characters from the comic books, we’ve got the sequels, and we’ve got what was established for the characters there and the relationships between those characters and their precedence and their antecedence. So it’s like trying to figure out manifestations of powers that don’t step on anybody’s toes and don’t lock the franchise into something that doesn’t want to be executed in the future. That’s all very difficult. In particular, if you take Emma Frost, January Jones’s character… to keep her performance alive in the form of this crystal woman was really difficult.
Beaks: Did you have a favorite character to work on?
John Dykstra: Oh boy, it’s hard. [Emma Frost] was really fun because she was so different from her original manifestation. Angel was great, too, because of her wings; I think the wings came out really cool looking. And Kevin [Bacon] in his Shaw character… that’s something that went outside the box. That hadn’t been defined by the comic book, hadn’t been defined by another movie, so we got to say “This is what it should look like” in a much broader sense than just what it looks like visually, but, you know, the whole concept of defining how he absorbed energy.
To see more of the interview, where he talks about working with Matthew Vaughn and some other stuff, head to the link below.
X-MEN: FIRST CLASS unveils the epic beginning of the X-Men saga – and a secret history of the Cold War and our world at the brink of nuclear Armageddon. As the first class discovers, harnesses, and comes to terms with their formidable powers, alliances are formed that will shape the eternal war between the heroes and villains of the X-Men universe.
X-Men First Class is now available on DVD and Blu-ray on the US, and is coming on October 28th in UK and September 28th on Brazil!