Screen Rant's Ryan George takes us back in time to the pitch meeting for X-Men: First Class, the reboot/prequel that forever confused the timeline of the X-Men movie franchise. Directed by Matthew Vaughn and released in 2011, X-Men: First Class took place in the 1960s and introduced a young Professor Charles Xavier (played by James McAvoy), a young Magneto (Michael Fassbender), and other younger versions of familiar mutants.

Then, of course, the prequel series went on to feature those same "young" versions of the characters in the '70s, '80s and '90s without any of them visibly aging during those three decades. In next year's X-Men: Dark Phoenix, 39 year-old McAvoy will be playing a 60-something Professor X. Apparently psychic powers are very good for the complexion.

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In the latest Screen Rant Pitch Meeting, we learn how X-Men: First Class was originally conceived, why the mutants are shown to have incredible powers but are strangely selectively about how and when they deploy them, and the dangers of being too self-conscious about your weird Beast feet.

X-Men: First Class was succeeded by X-Men: Days of Future Past, which attempted to fix the problems with the timeline and more firmly establish the prequel series as a proper reboot... but kind of just made things even more confusing. The franchise then moved on to X-Men: Apocalypse, which introduced young versions of Jean Grey (Sophie Turner), Cyclops (Tye Sheridan), Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and other characters from the original trilogy of X-Men movies. And just to add to the confusion a little more, both the X-Men movies and Avengers: Age of Ultron had their own versions of the super-fast mutant Quicksilver, who wasn't actually a mutant in Age of Ultron but an ordinary human who was experimented on using the Mind Stone.

After X-Men: Dark Phoenix, the future of the X-Men is looking uncertain, as Disney is close to wrapping up a deal to acquire Fox, which will bring the X-Men and the Fantastic Four under the same umbrella as the Marvel Cinematic Universe and most likely lead to yet another reboot to bring the X-Men into the MCU. Who knows - perhaps at this very moment a pitch meeting is taking place for Avengers 5: Avengers vs. X-Men. If that's the case, we'll be sure to reveal to you exactly how that pitch meeting went down in a few years.

Stay tuned to Screen Rant for more Pitch Meetings in the future! Or should that be, in the days of future past?

More: Rebooting The X-Men Is Easier For Marvel Than Rebooting Spider-Man