Bryan Singer’s hotly anticipated return to the X-Men world, Days of Future Past, won’t hit theaters for a little over two months, but that hasn’t stopped the director from talking about the next film in the franchise, X-Men: Apocalypse. In a recent interview, Singer revealed a few more details about the follow-up, hinting at where it will fit in the convoluted X-Men timeline, and promising some large scale destruction that the franchise has never seen before.
“We’re going to deal the the notion of ancient mutants – the fact they were born and existed thousands of years ago. But it’ll be a contemporary movie – well, it’ll take place in the ’80s… The ’80s is a period now – it’s hard for me to believe that! ‘Apocalypse’ will have more of the mass destruction that ‘X-Men’ films, to date, have not relied upon. There’s definitely now a character and a story that allow room for that kind of spectacle.”
As for which particular mutant provides that destructive possibility, I thought he might be referring to the titular Apocalypse, but Singer played coy about the character’s identity, saying:
I don’t want to get too specific, but we’ll introduce familiar characters in a younger time. That’ll be fun to show the audience. I call these movies in-between-quels. It’s a mind-fuck, sometimes, in terms of where things fall in the timeline!
As I said before, the X-Men timeline is a bit of a mess, thanks to the fact that only Singer himself has directed more than one installment. He left the franchise after X2, which of course led to the disaster that was The Last Stand. The studio then tried giving Wolverine his own solo adventure, which only muddied the waters even more. So, they decided to relaunch things with First Class, which could have easily been a reboot but is instead a direct lead-in to Days of Future Past, which connects both past and present cast members.
As it stands, DoFP could serve as a bit of a palette cleanser, clearing the slate a bit and getting things moving smoothly again. Oh, and let’s not forget The Wolverine, which takes place between The Last Stand and DoFP. So yes, a bit of a mind-f**k. The best thing the franchise has going for it is Singer though. He directed the first two films and produced First Class, arguably the three best entries in the series. Hopefully DoFP proves successful, because the director has some big plans for future films:
“Yeah, there actually are [more stories I want to tell]. It all stems back to when I did [the first] X-Men. You always want to know where a character’s going to go, what their future’s going be like. You can always sequelise. But on that film I also had actors asking ‘Who am I? Where did my character come from?’ So as a director you always need a backstory to give your actors. It may not be the right backstory, but it’s one you can give the actor to help them understand their character. These prequels are really exciting for me because they give me a chance to explore ideas I came up with more than a decade ago.”
With DoFP arriving in theaters soon (and a new trailer hitting the web in the next couple weeks), we’ll surely be hearing a lot more about Singer’s upcoming sequel in the near future.
But, while we’re on the subject of X-Men: Apocalypse, tell us, do you think we’ll finally see some of the classic costumes with the film taking place in the 1980’s? I can’t think of a better time for bright yellow spandex.