The onscreen X-Men universe is starting to become as vast as the one in the comics, where hundreds of superpowered beings fight for the future of humanity. And that drives movie fans wild, those excited by this year's X-Men: Days Of Future Past but nonetheless also thrilled for 2016's X-Men: Apocalypse. So far we know it's set in the 80's and involves the classic X-villain of the title. But we don't know which of the many mutants will be a part of the coming sequel until now.
EW caught up with Bryan Singer and Simon Kinberg to discuss the future of the X-Men universe, and Singer confirmed that the four central mutants at the heart of X-Men: Apocalypse will be Professor Xavier, Magneto, Beast and Mystique, specifically the incarnations from X-Men: First Class. This is a slightly unusual foursome, if taking into account the history of the comics: Beast and Magneto were never really a duo anyone paired too often. And the Mystique-Xavier connection is weird enough... how come Patrick Stewart never talked about his relationship with a little blue girl in the earlier films?
Singer also says he's going to try to introduce, and re-introduce a few other mutants, specifically Gambit and Nightcrawler, who were rumored earlier. "I’m excited because I want to start introducing familiar characters at different ages and also explore the ‘80s," he says, pleasing all of you who were hoping for more Cyclops! This may finally be the moment fans have discussed, where Singer completely eliminates X-Men: The Last Stand from continuity. Singer, you card.
Singer also talks about the film's connection to the Age Of Apocalypse storyline in the comics, which this won't directly emulate.
"You won’t feel at the end of the movie that it set up Apocalypse. What it does is it sets up possibilities. But what we’ll discover in Apocalypse is that events in this movie made that happen... Apocalypse deals with ancient mutancy. What would humans have thought mutants were? What would mutants think humans were? You’re dealing with gods and things like that. And what if one survived and what if that found its way into our world?"
Ominous. A very cool angle, introducing the mutants to one of them who has ascended to godhood. Though surely that just provides more ammo for Magneto to extoll the virtues of mutant rule over humankind, right? These movies are so pro-Magneto, casting the sexier actors as him, giving him the best subplots, and making the humans either so monstrous or feeble that they're basically begging for a mutant ruler. In Days Of Future Past they create GIANT ROBOTS to kill the mutants. If that's not an act of war, what is?
Kinberg discusses Apocalypse by saying, "From a visual standpoint it actually may be a bigger movie than Days of Future Past because there’ll be disaster-movie imagery, like the title would imply."
While Days Of Future Past is apparently super expensive, the money has not really been showing up onscreen, with the ads emphasizing the post-apocalyptic future and the massive cast. That's the sort of stuff we've seen before. But the X-Men characters coming face-to-face with a god? Consider Apocalypse, an ancient mutant from the dawn of man, like the architects of Prometheus: a towering, mysterious focal point for the evolution of man. Heck, why not just have X-Men crossover with the follow-up Prometheus and let Apocalypse run loose in Ridley Scott's world? Would anyone really complain?
