X-Men: Days Of Future Past charged out of the gate back in May, and has since emerged as the most successful entry in the franchise to date. Raking in $746 million worldwide, it took no time at all for Fox to greenlight a sequel. X-Men: Apocalypse will continue the mutant saga that was initiated in 2011’s sort-of reboot, First Class, and revisited in the ‘past’ portion of DoFP.
Writer Simon Kinberg and director Bryan Singer are planning to pack a hefty punch with Apocalypse, which will serve as an unofficial closing chapter to the latest round of X-movies. So, if First Class introduced us to the initial wave of mutants, and Days integrated them with established names such as Wolverine and Storm, who will be in the spotlight for Apocalypse?
Talking to Collider, Kinberg went into detail about the intended direction for the story, and who we can expect in the limelight:
“I will say that [X-Men: Apocalypse] is definitely the close of a trilogy for those First Class characters, which isn’t to say we won’t see them in future movies, hopefully we will, but it’s a completion of an arc for them. I think that the friendship between Erik and Charles, which has always been so integral to the franchise, is something we’re continuing to explore and hopefully deepen with Apocalypse. And the relationship between Beast and Mystique is a really interesting one that we didn’t have a lot of time to explore in Days of Future Past, so we’ll have an opportunity to do more of that in Apocalypse.”
“Part of what’s really interesting about Mystique’s character is that she is, in some ways, the child of both Erik and Charles. She grew up with Charles and then she sort of became a woman with Erik, so her being the cross-pollination, if you will, of those two philosophies and those two men is something we can explore in the movie too.”
Beefing up Jennifer Lawrence’s screen time as the younger Mystique would certainly be a smart move. The actress shared the last outing with a giant ensemble cast, which meant we weren’t granted a lot of time to reflect on Mystique’s transformation. Setting her up as the pseudo-spawn of Erik and Charles, and exploring that dynamic is one that this writer welcomes whole heartedly.
One of the only drawbacks from DoFP‘s expansive cast meant that there was inevitable collateral character damage. While Lawrence’s role was key to a large portion of the plot, others weren’t so lucky; Anna Paquin’s Rogue was reduced to a non-speaking cameo. So, there’s a good chance that for the X-Men’s eighties adventure, we’ll get a whole lotta Mystique.
X-Men: Apocalypse opens on May 27th, 2016. Tell us, are you excited that there’ll be more J-Law? Or would you prefer another mutant to take the spotlight?
