X-MEN Director Bryan Singer Responds To Fan Complaints About Apocalypse

Some fans can just be incredibly hard to please and seem to nit-pick at every small detail they might not like and the worst of these is normally the comic book fans. Almost every comic book film that comes out will have some detractors knocking something they might not like about the adaptation or portrayal of an incident and how it may differ from the comic books. While often their concerns are justified, at the end of the day it’s the studios who decide how they want to make the movie.

I kind of like the idea of studios and directors always putting their own interpretation on things, but some fans want everything to fit into their preferred interpretation and it often becomes quite annoying hearing fan feedback of these films at times. The industry has grown to expect this though and most times directors will turn a blind eye to fan-boy complaints, because often it all comes down to opinion anyway and traditionally, this type of press normally creates a lot of interest in the film anyway for the average cinema goer.

Once such film which came under a lot of scrutiny from these fan-boys was X-Men: Apocalypse. When Apocalypse (played by Oscar Isaac) was finally unveiled for the first time (in the pic below), there was criticism about the diminutive stature of the character in the film compared to the comics and also comparisons between character to Ivan Ooze of the Power Rangers.  All these complaints haven’t gone unnoticed and in a recent interview with IGN (via Comic Book Movie), director Bryan Singer had the following to say to the film’s detractors:

[The first X-Men: Apocalypse trailer] was simply Oscar using his normal voice — which is wonderful; his performance is fantastic — but that was never the intention. We just needed those words to govern the first teaser. So people thought, ‘Oh, wait, is that going to be his voice during the whole movie?’ It’s like, no, but to tell the story of the first teaser, we needed the voice, and I hadn’t recreated the voice yet.

The director has pointed out that all of Isaac’s lines have been redone in post-production and digitally touched up to sound more authentic to what people might expect of the character.

 What I’m doing is something very unique. It hasn’t been done before. We’re rerecording his entire performance because the suit’s creaky and makes all kinds of noise, you can’t really use any of it anyway. But I want his performance. It ebbs and flows and moves through the movie, and changes, so he doesn’t just have one single voice. He speaks with different voices depending on different moments in the film. So it’s really kind of cool. It’s the first time I’ve ever had the tools to sculpt a performance in post-production, that was already given to me on set and chosen in the cutting room.

Of the divisive first image that was released, Singer confirmed what many of us predicted at the time; it wasn’t the finished version of Apocalypse. This is to be expected and something I wish fans would understand – that a lot of footage that gets released early may not reflect the finished product. I do think they were perhaps a little hasty in getting those pics out and perhaps could’ve done a better job revealing the look only when they were actually ready.

There was an image released on Entertainment Weekly, where the effect hadn’t been put in yet, so everyone was — the effect has a pink light on it, and everyone got lit up pink, so people thought Apocalypse was going to be pink. I was like, ‘No, no, they’re all pink. Take a look. Everyone in the picture is pink. It’s a pink picture.’ They maybe just should have taken the pink out of the picture — I should have taken the pink out of the picture. I’m going to take some blame for that. My fault, not Entertainment Weekly’s. That’s the picture I gave them.

The final big Apocalypse complaint has of course been in regards to his size. It is always going to be difficult to render a character of that size appropriately in a movie, especially from a narrative point of view – which Singer explains was the key reason for his decision on the portrayal of the character in the film.

So then people were like, ‘He’s small.’ I’m like, ‘Okay, I got the same s*** when I cast a six-foot-three actor to play five-foot-four Wolverine. I got the same s*** when Quicksilver’s very sweet, 1970s costume was released on an Empire Magazine cover.’ You know, every time. I could have made him a giant through the whole movie, or some muscle-bound guy who can’t act — I could always do that. But the reality is, among his many powers — and you will see him change size — but among his many powers is his power of persuasion, and it was very important that he’d be able to connect with his horsemen, at their level, and that he’d be played by a guy who can actually act like Oscar, who’s a fantastic actor.

I’m personally still hugely excited for the film and have liked what I’ve seen so far in the film. It might be difficult to live up to all the hype, but it should still be a lot of fun to watch and should feature some epic showdowns between the different mutant characters, which is what most of us want anyway from the film.

On a side note though – you can notice the difference in the way the likes of Marvel engage with their fans in trying to be as faithful to the comics as possible, whereas the big studios prefer to brush off the criticism for their own interpretations. As mentioned earlier, I don’t have any issues with this – it is their film, but perhaps they are creating alienating practices that may prevent success of future films in these franchises. Already the way Warner Bros has been engaging fans who disliked BvS, may be impacting future success of their next movies, regardless of how good they are. What do you think?

Are you excited for the Apocalypse film or are you one of the naysayers who don’t think it is a fair adaptation to the comics?

Last Updated: May 10, 2016