Patrick Stewart (Picard) discussed the evolution of Professor X and expressed his surprise that Star Trek was returning the big screen so quickly.

In a short video interview at The IESB (which also has a print interview containing major spoilers about the end of the upcoming X-Men: The Last Stand), Stewart explained that he knew nothing about the Marvel franchise when he accepted the role of Xavier. "When I started doing my research, the studio sent me lots of comic books," he said. "It was all delightfully new."

In preparing for X3, Stewart added, he went back and watched both previous movies "as a way of getting into who we were, where we were...that seemed to be particularly important given that we had a different director...one of the nice things was, looking at the movies again, I still thought they were terrific." In terms of his character's development, he felt, "There was a real consistency; however, there are revelations in this one, especially concerning his relationship with Jean Grey. That's very strong stuff." Stewart wished that in the midst of the action sequences there had been more time to examine the control he exerted over Jean (played by Famke Janssen, who played Kamala in The Next Generation's "The Perfect Mate").

"One of the problems in writing Xavier into these stories is that when it comes to the action climaxes, there are two reasons you can't involve him," Stewart observed. "One, he's so powerful that he would overwhelm whatever the opposition was, and the other is that he's also in a wheelchair and limited to an extent in how he can participate."

Stewart was also asked about his feelings about the upcoming eleventh Star Trek film. "You know more about this than I do," the actor admitted. "I only heard a few months ago, from Hollywood...that the studio, with its new administration -- Paramount, that is -- was interested in revisiting the Star Trek franchise." He had been told that J.J. Abrams wanted to be involved, but did not think that the plans included any Next Generation characters.

"I'm a little surprised," he added. "I really thought that the curtain had come down on Star Trek, maybe for ten or twenty years."

The full interview is at The IESB.

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