The latest comic book movie, X-Men: Days of Future Past opened to huge numbers this weekend and to solid critical reception, and already we are looking forward to the next installment of the X-Men 2.0 timeline. Director Bryan Singer and Days of Future Past writer Simon Kinberg have a hell of a lot planned for the 2016 follow up, X-Men: Apocalypse. I emphasize the word hell.
X-Men: Days of Future Past Review Roundup
"The kind of scope and scale we're talking about is like disaster movie, extinction level event. Sort of Roland Emmerich-style moviemaking, which you've never seen in an X-Men movie, or any superhero movie, which I think is exciting." Kinberg told IGN. Emmerich is the undisputed king of the visual disaster so one can hope that Singer will channel that while retaining much of his acumen for the quiet moments.
For those of you who stuck around until the end of Days of Future Past, the titular Apocalypse can be seen as a boy single-handedly building the pyramids. Apocalypse is an immortal mutant born in the time of the pharaohs and who has, basically, every mutant ability. Any power he doesn't have, why, he can just give himself. In the original comics, Apocalypse is awoken when Cable travels back in time during the Days of Future Past event. Since another character went back in the current X-Men movie, no doubt the fates of both will hang in the balance.
On creating Apocalypse, who is basically inferior only to Thanos, Kinberg said: "The thing that we've spent the most time talking about is not just the visual execution of the character, which is its own challenge - creating a character that's the most powerful I think of any mutant villain that we've seen in the X-Men movies so far. More powerful than Magneto."
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In an interview with MTV, James McAvoy, who plays a younger Professor X in the new timeline, is excited to be a part of the franchise still. "What I think is really epic about 'Apocalypse' - bearing in mind I have had no communication with [writer] Simon [Kinberg] about what he's thinking - is the fact that it seems to be going kind of biblical. It seems to be going back to the origins of the species," he said.
'Biblical'. Wrath of God. Old Testament biblical. That's what I'm talking about.
I was hesitant about X-Men: Days of Future Past, on paper it seemed like the worst of comics, the need to retcon all the dangling threads into a 'Crisis Level Event' and the worst of studios, which wanted to fix its mistakes not by a) not making the mistakes in the first place but rather cramming in the kitchen sink to try and make amends. Surprisingly, it does work and is one of the best X-Men films to date. Consider all of us here at GameNGuide very, very excited for X-Men: Apocalypse.
The best X-Men is still, however, the 90s cartoon: