Saw X-Men: Apocalypse this weekend. It was a great movie. Oscar Isaac is a great actor but I think the character design used for Apocalypse was… not what I expected.
See, I grew up watching X-Men: The Animated Series and also reading the comic books. My vision of what he would look like on film is way off what I thought it would be. This always isn’t a bad thing, and in this case, I would say it just would probably come down to taste.
After doing some research, I found out that Ironhead Studios, the team behind the character design of numerous superhero movies, was in the running to create a design for Apocalypse. Check this out from CinemaBlend:
“The folks at Tested recently visited the Monsterpalooza convention in Southern California in order to get a better look at all of the coolest Hollywood monster and costume designs set to hit cinemas within the next year. [One of the most notable models present was an image of Apocalypse that looks ripped straight from the comic books.]
Although it’s not greatly different from the final version of the character portrayed by Oscar Isaac, it seems to make a few distinct changes. The X-Men: Apocalypse version of the titular character seems to wear an outfit that is much more intricate and ornate in nature – as opposed to the more stark, smooth appearance of the original design. Also, the original version of En Sabah Nur seemed to be a bit more physically imposing, while the iteration of the character we will see has a somewhat slender physique and more human in appearance.
We cannot know for sure what caused the folks at FOX to make the decision to change the character’s appearance, but we can likely assume it has something to do with work being done by the competition. This original version of Apocalypse bears a great many similarities to the visual style of Josh Brolin’s Thanos, so Bryan Singer likely desired to set his coming X-Men adventure apart from the Mad Titan over at Marvel Studios.”
I have no idea why Bryan Singer choose the design he did, but I can bet money that Marvel Studios wouldn’t have approved it. I get that they wanted to make the design more Egyptian but they could have done that while staying true to the overall look and size from the comic books/TV Show.
What did you think about the character design? Let me know on Twitter.
Here’s what I think it should have been close to, design-wise. If you haven’t seen X-Men: Apocalypse, go see it. Especially if you seen the other films.
