Bryan Singer

Like the trailer for Captain America: Civil War, the first trailer for X-Men: Apocalypse has a whole lot to unpack, from new characters to Oscar Isaac’s ungodly villain and his four horsemen, and yes, the bald-ification of James McAvoy’s Professor X. To help you digest all of this, director Bryan Singer has offered a breakdown of some of the bigger happenings in the new sequel.

I’m an old enough nerd to remember when the first X-Men movie came out in theaters. At that time, comic books were not the number one driver of all things in popular culture. Bryan Singer’s X-Men certainly featured all the comic’s beloved heroes and villains, but there did seem like there was a concerted effort to tamp down some of their comic-book-ness. Everyone dressed in black. There was no spandex. The story was grounded in weighty real-world themes like prejudice and vengeance. It was the X-Men you knew, but watered down just a bit. It was a rum and coke, not a shot of gin. X-Men: Apocalypse, in comparison, looks like a bottle of Beefeater.

In a little less than a month we’ll be seeing two things: a new Star Wars movie and the first trailer for X-Men: Apocalypse. While it’s possible that we’ll see a short teaser-for-the-tease-trailer for the latter in the week leading up to its official theatrical debut, director Bryan Singer has shared a new photo from the film in case you were feeling a tad anxious.

The X-Men cinematic universe has been mulling around a TV branch for some time now, and at last we've learned that mutants will invade not one, but two new series. FX has tapped Fargo showrunner Noah Hawley to helm a series around Professor Xavier's son Legion, while FOX will join the club, literally and figuratively, with a Hellfire TV series.

X-Men: Apocalypse isn’t just the conclusion of the recent trilogy kicked off by First Class; it’s basically the conclusion of six X-Men films, which began in 2000 with Bryan Singer’s first X-Men movie, and comes full circle with Singer’s Apocalypse, hitting theaters next spring. As such, the director says that we can probably expect a longer runtime for the new sequel, while also warning of potential spoilers in the forthcoming trailer.

Where do you go after the apocalypse? Under the sea, apparently.

Most of our updates on X-Men: Apocalypse have been coming from Instagram as of late, with director Bryan Singer providing set photos and teasing out various characters and their stories (Storm’s origins, Angel hanging out in a Berlin fight club). The latest updates from the set feature Olivia Munn practicing Psylocke’s sweet sword skills, as well as confirmation that the film is shooting in 3D.

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A few months ago, Bryan Singer revealed some concept art from X-Men: Apocalypse, which featured Angel in a cage with his glorious wings fully expanded. The latest set photo from the film shows Singer filming this sequence with Ben Hardy, and shines some more light on the context of the scene, which has something to do with a fight club.

X-Men: Apocalypse is spending some time shooting in Cairo (or whatever stands in for Cairo), which is not only the place where the big bad Apocalypse resides, but where Storm herself was raised. Director Bryan Singer previously teased Storm’s origin story in a recent set photo, and the latest update from set reiterates that idea with a photo of Storm gazing out at a storm over Cairo.