The film may be called X-Men: First Class, but the promo picture sure doesn’t look very classy.

The picture was released on The Daily Blam!, and while the photo is supposed to excite X-Men fans and regular moviegoers alike, it doesn’t. At all.

Where to begin with this? This picture is supposed to inspire excitement in comic book fans and movie lovers, but all it inspires is the same fear and dread fans have had since the first X-Men movie, fears and complaints that only grew to a head during the release of the third X-Men film. I mean, the photoshop job makes all of the costumes, prosthetics, and other accouterments look much faker than expected. Of course, it’s not all of Photoshop’s fault; this post could be filled with a critique on Emma Frost’s (January Jones) Victoria’s Secret lingerie look alone! I have to agree with ScreenCrave that this picture can not be the final product. At least, it shouldn’t be.

On a semi-personal note, the biggest complaint I had as a moviegoer was that the skin tones on folks like Nightcrawler and Mystique were just one note, making their skin look extremely fake. Real skin tones have modulation due to the amount of blood in a person’s face, i.e. flushing, etc. Without any type of modulation (which could have been done on a computer or accomplished with more intensive face paint), it’s hard to suspend your disbelief that this blue person is actually really blue and not just some person with blue paint and latex on their face. However, it would appear that the same one-tone skin is being used on Azazel (Jason Flemyng), Beast (Nicholas Hoult) and Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), which is extremely unfortunate and highly annoying. As stated above, realistic, yet odd, skin tones are possible; just look at the characters in Pan’s Labyrinth, particularly the Pale Man.

Here’s the official synopsis:

X-Men First Class charts the epic beginning of the X-Men saga, and reveals a secret history of famous global events. Before mutants had revealed themselves to the world, and before Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr took the names Professor X and Magneto, they were two young men discovering their powers for the first time. Not archenemies, they were instead at first the closest of friends, working together with other Mutants (some familiar, some new), to stop Armageddon. In the process, a grave rift between them opened, which began the eternal war between Magneto’s Brotherhood and Professor X’s X-Men.

The film is set to come out June 3, 2011.