‘I never read comics when I was a kid’: Bryan Singer on fourth X-Men movie, Apocalypse
Director never expected to be making action movies based on comic books but found he connected with ‘this universe that’s all about misfits and outcasts who become superheroes’
One night a few years ago, director Bryan Singer was at the Saddle Ranch Chop House in Los Angeles, half-drunk, having a good time when a dark cinematic vision popped into his head.
“I was with a bunch of friends, buzzed, eating chicken wings,” Singer recalled on a recent afternoon. “Suddenly, I was like, ‘How about you see a boy and you don’t know what he’s doing — and then we reveal that he’s building a giant pyramid effortlessly, and nearby on a sand dune are four men on horses?’”
That first glimpse of the X-Men franchise’s next villain – an ultra-powerful mutant with a god complex known as Apocalypse, first introduced in the comics in 1986 – would ultimately become the post-credits tag at the end of 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past , which went on to gross nearly US$750 million worldwide. Now the fearsome, hulking villain will get his full turn in the spotlight in X-Men: Apocalypse, which hits Hong Kong cinemas on May 19.
The ninth instalment in the long-running comic-book franchise (counting such spin-offs as February’s smash Deadpool ), the film kicks off with the cult-like leader Apocalypse (played by Oscar Isaac), who was worshipped as a god in ancient times, awakening in 1983 after centuries of being dormant. Angered by the state of the world, he seduces four mutants, including Magneto (Michael Fassbender), to help him wipe out civilisation and usher in a new order. Enter Charles Xavier (James McAvoy), Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) and a team of young mutants to help save humankind.
