X-Men: Apocalypse announced for May 2016

[Alidar Jarok]

Well, he would be awesome in any role

To be fair, I think if we're talking about someone born in the ancient middle east and lived for thousands of years, I believe they generally go with Liam Neeson.

 

[Christopher]

Well, Alex Proyas is making a movie called Gods of Egypt, and playing the Egyptian gods are the likes of Gerard Butler (Scottish), Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Danish), and Geoffrey Rush (Australian of British/Irish/German ancestry). So there's that.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Liam needs to retire, or get some range.

 

[Pauln6]

In the IDW ongoing comic they are showing Khan's youth with the correct ethnicity so will presumably hand-wave away Cumberbatch's ethnicity as a disguise to protect his identity.

Additionally, Apocalypse sometimes usurps other bodies when his own wears out and he's a shapeshifter so handsome young white dude is more likely than anything else sadly.

 

[Set Harth]

Young white dudes are so underrepresented in film, it'll be good to see one of them finally getting a break.

 

[Pauln6]

Young white dudes are so underrepresented in film, it'll be good to see one of them finally getting a break.

True dat.

I, for one, pledge my undying support for our Hollywood Overseers.

 

[Gaith]

So Apocalypse will probably look pretty much like this, right? I've been assuming he'll be a CG mocap character; the vague unreality of even the highest-end CG could in this case work in the movie's favor to give him an even more nightmarish presence in addition to beefing up his physique.

 

[Christopher]

Allowing for the typical exaggeration of comic-book art, I don't see anything about Apocalypse's appearance that couldn't be easily enough achieved with prosthetic makeup. Well, he is rather large and able to grow to giant size (at least he could in the '90s cartoon), so maybe he could be a mocap character.

 

[Guy Gardener]

In the IDW ongoing comic they are showing Khan's youth with the correct ethnicity so will presumably hand-wave away Cumberbatch's ethnicity as a disguise to protect his identity.

Additionally, Apocalypse sometimes usurps other bodies when his own wears out and he's a shapeshifter so handsome young white dude is more likely than anything else sadly.

I'm reading that too, but I assumed that Khan is going to die getting them aboard the Botany Bay, and Ricardo Khan is going to say to Bendict Khan with his dying breath: "Now you are Khan!"

 

[Obiwanshinobi]

Allowing for the typical exaggeration of comic-book art, I don't see anything about Apocalypse's appearance that couldn't be easily enough achieved with prosthetic makeup. Well, he is rather large and able to grow to giant size (at least he could in the '90s cartoon), so maybe he could be a mocap character.

Yeah probably same treatment they're going to give Thanos.

 

[Gaith]

Allowing for the typical exaggeration of comic-book art, I don't see anything about Apocalypse's appearance that couldn't be easily enough achieved with prosthetic makeup. Well, he is rather large and able to grow to giant size (at least he could in the '90s cartoon), so maybe he could be a mocap character.

True, but one could have made the same argument for Gollum - find a very lanky guy, cover him in gray body paint, and give him a prosthetic skull cap. And one wouldn't have been wrong, either, but I don't think any of us wish they had gone that route.

 

[Guy Gardener]

His big blue lips make contact with his ear lobes.

 

[JacksonArcher]

Bryan Singer Bringing Back X2 Writers Mike Dougherty and Dan Harris for X-MEN: APOCALYPSE

Great news.

However, Mike Dougherty and Dan Harris unofficially did some re-write work on Days of Future Past, so this isn't all that surprising. Still good news, though.

I like Simon Kinberg, but he's very much hit or miss as a screenwriter. I trust Singer, but I'm glad Dougherty and Harris are back for Days of Future Past and Apocalypse.

Also, it seems that Singer is collaborating with Dougherty and Harris on an X-Men comic-book. They were slated to work on one in the pre-X-Men: The Last Stand days but Singer left that project for Superman Returns and the rest is history. With Singer back with the X-Men universe, it appears that comic-book is getting revitalized and will probably get released sometime next year.

 

[Christopher]

True, but one could have made the same argument for Gollum - find a very lanky guy, cover him in gray body paint, and give him a prosthetic skull cap. And one wouldn't have been wrong, either, but I don't think any of us wish they had gone that route.

I don't quite agree with the analogy. The idea behind Gollum is that he's emaciated to an extreme degree, that the Ring has eaten away at his body and soul until there's very little left. Getting someone "lanky" wouldn't cut it; you'd need someone on the verge of starving to death. It's within the possible range of human variation but far beyond what you could ethically ask of any live performer.

Apocalypse, on the other hand, is basically just a big, muscular guy with gray skin and blue lines on his face who likes to wear big shoulder pads and a mongrammed belt buckle. Okay, he's about seven feet tall, which is getting into Richard Kiel/Carel Struycken territory, but it's doable.

Granted, though, finding someone really tall and muscular who's also a good actor is tricky. So that might justify going CGI, although it seems extravagantly expensive in a case like this, given that it's easy to make actors look bigger with costuming, camera angles, and the like.

I mean, really, if the X-Men movies got hung up on height, Hugh Jackman would never have qualified to be Wolverine.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

I don't see it being a big deal either way.

 

[Guy Gardener]

if they have his ship in the movie...

Will they tap the celestials?

Which means showing the origin of the Mutants?

Squee!

 

[Christopher]

I don't see it being a big deal either way.

Why would it be a big deal? We're chatting about entertainment on the Internet. The odds of anything we discuss being a big deal, rather than simply idle conversation to pass the time, are relatively slim. If we had things on our minds that actually were big deals, we'd probably be off dealing with those... err... deals instead of rattling around on our keyboards talking about a movie that hasn't been made yet.

 

[Set Harth]

In the IDW ongoing comic they are showing Khan's youth with the correct ethnicity so will presumably hand-wave away Cumberbatch's ethnicity as a disguise to protect his identity.

Additionally, Apocalypse sometimes usurps other bodies when his own wears out and he's a shapeshifter so handsome young white dude is more likely than anything else sadly.

I'm reading that too, but I assumed that Khan is going to die getting them aboard the Botany Bay, and Ricardo Khan is going to say to Bendict Khan with his dying breath: "Now you are Khan!"

The timelines don't diverge until 2233. Ricardo Khan must become Benedict Khan after that point.

It's within the possible range of human variation but far beyond what you could ethically ask of any live performer.

Other than Christian Bale.

 

[Guy Gardener]

You're forgetting about the timetravel.

Kirk in 1930, 1968, 1969, and 1984, then Picard in 1890 something, 2063, Sisko in 2024, and Janeway in 1996...

Without all those people from the original timeline going back and fiddling, the road to the actual divergence in 2233 is going to be a little off.

Unless the act of travelling through time puts you outside of time and prophylizes you from any ongoing temporal edition that original timeline, where Kirk, Picard, Sisko and Janeway still sorted out the past even though if they tried to return to thier future, they'll now only find the new Abrams Timeline where their home should be.

 

[JD]

I wonder who they'll cast as Apocalypse. I'd suggest Clancy Brown, but I think he would be better suited as Cable. This might be retreading a somewhat similar character in The Mummy movies, but Arnold Vosloo would be cool too.

^Idris Elba?

Ron Perlman?

Hmm, well, En Sabah Nur is supposed to be a native of what's now Jordan, so ideally he should be played by someone from that part of the world, or someone who can pass for it. Alexander Siddig, Naveen Andrews, somebody like that. Although that may be expecting too much of Hollywood.

While I would love to see more non-white actors in these kinds of movies, I figured that Apocalypse would be either CGI or covered in so much makeup that his race wouldn't be an issue. I was going more for overall body shape and voice.