Trivia / X-Men: Apocalypse

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• Billing Displacement: An odd case because the order of the main cast listing is different on FOX's official website (which is also used for trailers, TV spots and posters), IMDb and the title cards of the end credits, so examples must specify which source. For reference's sake, here's the order shown during the title cards: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Oscar Isaac, Nicholas Hoult, Rose Byrne, Evan Peters, Tye Sheridan, Sophie Turner, Olivia Munn, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Alexandra Shipp, Lucas Till, Josh Helman, Ben Hardy, Lana Condor, Željko Ivanek, Anthony Konechny.
  • In every version, Byrne's name appears before Sheridan's and Turner's even though her screen time is smaller than the other two.
  • For IMDb and the end credits' title cards, Peters is also listed higher than Sheridan or Turner, yet Quicksilver is a secondary character while Cyclops and Jean Grey are main characters.
• California Doubling: The exterior of John Abbott College (located in a suburb of Montreal) was the stand-in for the Auschwitz concentration camp. The steel mill factory where Erik works is in Saint-Ours, a town about 75 km from Montreal. The East Berlin fight club venue is the Corona Theatre in Old Montreal.
• Celebrity Voice Actor: In the Japanese dub, Apocalypse is voiced by the comedian and actor Ken Matsudaira, better known for non-Japanese audiences as the sumo wrestler Matsutaro Sakaguchi, and to a more specific audience as Tokugawa Yoshimune!
• Creator Backlash: Many of the cast members including Sophie Turner, Oscar Isaac and Jennifer Lawrence state they didn't enjoy working on this film, with Turner describing Bryan Singer as "unpleasant" and Lawrence describing the film's production as "all chaos, no fun". Isaac's gripes also included Apocalypse's costume and makeup, which according to him prevented him from being able to properly move or even adjust his head to face the actors.
• Deleted Scene: See here.
• Dueling Works:
  • This film was vying with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Captain America: Civil War (among others) to see which will be the most successful superhero film at the box office. It has received mixed reviews from critics overall, having a 48% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which is better than Batman v Superman 's overall rating (27%) but worse than Civil War 's overall rating (90%). It has earned a total of over $540 million, which is less than the other two films. According to the newspaper La Nación, the three films feature conflicts between some superheroes and other superheroes, instead of the simple "hero vs. villain" conflict (although it still has by far and away the most "classic" villain out of the three).
  • 2016 features an internal duel for the Fox-owned X-Men Film Series, as Apocalypse was released after Deadpool. Deadpool did much better critically and at the box office (both domestically and worldwide) with a much smaller budget.
• Dyeing for Your Art:
  • James McAvoy had his head shaved to resemble Patrick Stewart's since his character is much older in this film... and because Xavier finally loses his hair and gets his iconic Chrome Dome Psi look. He kept it for Split.
  • Alexandra Shipp also shaved her hair into a mohawk.
  • Oscar Isaac had to go through extensive make-up and an uncomfortable costume, which the humid weather made even worse to endure.
    "I would do some acting and then go to my tent and try to breathe and not freak out that sweat was pouring into my ears and I couldn't touch them. It was rough."
  • Olivia Munn trained herself to become cross-dominant to match Psylocke's fighting style. She mentioned that it was James McAvoy who suggested it to her. The form-fitting costume was very difficult to put on.
    "They lube me down and I step into this latex. We did a whole latex fitting."
• #EngineeredHashtag: Four special temporary cute emojis triggered by specific hashtags were created: #SoGenius for Professor X, #SoDevastating for Apocalypse, #SoQuick for Quicksilver #SoElectric for Storm.
• Executive Meddling: Initially, Wolverine was going to have a larger role in the film. It would be him, and not Mystique, who shows up during the crisis and acts as the new field leader of the X-Men.
• Fake American:
  • English actress Sophie Turner plays Jean Grey.
  • Canadian Anthony Konechny is the jock who bullies Scott.
• Fake Nationality:
  • Apocalypse's main actor is not Egyptian, but Guatemalan American Oscar Isaac. In the prologue, Canadian Berdj Garabedian embodied the elderly version of the character.
  • Kodi Smit-McPhee, who is Australian, portrays the German Nightcrawler.
  • Storm is an African (possibly Egyptian in this movie) who is played by an American, Alexandra Shipp.
  • British/Japanese Psylocke is played by Olivia Munn, an American of Hoa (Chinese-Vietnamese), English, Irish, and German ancestry. The hilarious irony being that three British actors play American characters, yet the one British X-Man is played by an American.
  • The Vietnamese-American Lana Condor acts the part of Jubilee, who is of Chinese descent.
  • Canadian stuntpeople personified the Four Horsemen in the prologue, who were presumably Egyptian.
• Meaningful Release Date:
  • The film was released during Sir Ian McKellen's (the original Magneto) birthday.
  • The film was also released 10 years after X-Men: The Last Stand.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Even though the original timeline was erased, according to X-Men: The Last Stand, Charles and Erik should already look like Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen by the 1980s (they are still played by James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender in this film).
  • Similarly, the teenaged version of Cyclops is portrayed by Tye Sheridan instead of Tim Pocock, who played the character in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Moreover, we have Josh Helman as William Stryker (returning from Days of Future Past) instead of Danny Huston.
  • A couple of mutants introduced in X-Men: The Last Stand have been subjected to this; Ben Hardy replaces Ben Foster as Angel/Archangel, and Olivia Munn replaces Meiling Melançon as Psylocke.
  • Haley Ramm played the teenaged Jean Grey in The Last Stand. Sophie Turner takes over now.
  • Lana Condor takes over the role of Jubilee from Katarina Florence (X-Men) and Kea Wong (X2: X-Men United, X-Men: The Last Stand).
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • Tye Sheridan was exhilarated that he got to work with with James McAvoy, his idol.
    Sheridan: I came back from having a week off and it's my first scene to shoot with James McAvoy, and let me tell you something—James McAvoy is my idol! We get along great, and I've told him how big of a fan I am, but just to even be working with him—just to meet him and talk to him is amazing. But having a scene where I'm one on one with him—my god, it's insane!
  • Also, Olivia Munn fought hard to allow for her character to wear the classic purple leotard than a more practical black costume.
• Referenced by...:
  • From the The Simpsons episode "Haw-Haw Land":
    Homer: Moonlight? But none of us has seen it!
    Marge: We have the DVD, we can watch it tonight.
    Homer: Either that or X-Men: Apocalypse!
    Everyone in the background: X-MEN!
  • In this comedy skit, James McAvoy slyly references his own movie when he tells Josh Horowitz, "Calm yourself, man, it's not like it's... [Breaks the Fourth Wall by looking at the camera] the apocalypse, after all." His business card reads, "Professor XXX - Computer repair. Mind control. Sex master." McAvoy and Horowitz must be aware that Xavier's Fan Nickname for this film is "Professor Sex," and the actor portrays a Chivalrous Pervert in the video, just like his X-Men character.
• Refitted for Sequel: The scene with Scott discovering his powers in the bathroom was conceived originally for the very first movie (and features in the novelization).
• Scully Box: Oscar Isaac is a meager 5' 8½" (1.74m). Apocalypse's boots make him as tall as the 6' 0" (1.83m) Michael Fassbender.
• Short Run in Peru: The movie's theatrical release is earlier in most territories outside of North America. It only opens later in China and Japan.
• Throw It In!:
  • According to Lucas Till, James McAvoy ad-libbed "Wreak havoc," which is one of the most memorable one-liners in the movie.
  • Michael Fassbender improvised the "Is this what you want from me?" line.
• Troubled Production: To what extent isn't fully known, but what is known is that Bryan Singer's habit of being absent from set caused problems on set, meaning Newton Thomas Sigel (the film's cinematographer) and Simon Kinberg (the writer and producer) had to direct some scenes. Olivia Munn revealed that Singer abruptly left the Montreal set to fly down to LA to deal with a "thyroid problem" (something most on set questioned as to why he didn't treat in Canada), returning after only 10 days while simply texting actors "Keep filming" or "It's fine. Just keep filming without me" in-between. Sophie Turner revealed that Singer was, in her words, "unpleasant" and implied that the on-set tension between Singer and Rami Malek on Bohemian Rhapsody also happened with her. Oscar Isaac also hated the costume and makeup he had to wear to play Apocalypse, which according to him prevented him from being able to properly move or even turn his head to face the actors due to how restrictive and heavy the full-body suit was. Jennifer Lawrence also described the production as "all chaos, no fun" in an interview and it’s understandably theorized by fans that her experience on this set was the main reason Lawrence decided to leave the franchise, though she came back for Dark Phoenix. Munn also later complained about Singer's and Kinberg's lack of knowledge of the original comics, revealing that the two knew almost nothing about Psylocke's backstory, and originally wanted the character to wear a generic Movie Superheroes Wear Black outfit, resulting in her having to lobby for something closer to her comic outfit.
• Typecasting: After getting the chance to play against type in X-Men: Days of Future Past, James McAvoy is once more relegated to the all-too familiar role of a Brainy Brunet, Wide-Eyed Idealist in a Period Piece. This is so pervasive in his career that you only have to look at the above Actor Allusion entry for Starter for 10—which was released a decade before Apocalypse—for proof that he's essentially recycling the same persona.
• Underage Casting:
  • During filming, James McAvoy and Rose Byrne were 36 years old while Michael Fassbender was 38, but their characters are in their late forties/early fifties in 1983.
  • Nicholas Hoult was 25 years old during principal photography, but if we assume that his character was around 20 in 1962, then in 1983 Beast is pushing 40.
  • Likewise, Mystique, who grew up with Charles, would be in her late 40s at the youngest, while Jennifer Lawrence was 24-25 during principal photography. Being a shapeshifter, though, she can look as young as she wants.
  • Lucas Till is 8 months younger than Hoult, and Havok is only a couple of years younger than Beast. Alex Summers is roughly two decades older than his brother Scott, but Tye Sheridan is just 6 years Till's junior.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Taron Egerton was originally approached for the role of Scott Summers before Tye Sheridan was cast, but turned down the offer in order to star in Eddie the Eagle, despite being a fan of the X-Men franchise.
    • Josh Hutcherson, Timothée Chalamet, Dylan O'Brien, Logan Lerman, Charlie Rowe, Jamie Blackley, Jesse Plemons and Ben Hardy were also considered for the part of Cyclops before the casting of Sheridan. Hardy would eventually go on to play Angel in the film.
  • Chloë Grace Moretz was initially offered the role of Jean Grey before the casting of Sophie Turner. However, Moretz turned it down due to scheduling conflicts with The 5th Wave.
    • Elle Fanning, Saoirse Ronan, Sasha Pieterse, Lily Collins, Daisy Ridley, Margot Robbie, Grace Caroline Currey and Hailee Steinfeld were considered for the part of Jean Grey as well before the casting of Turner. Steinfeld would later portray Spider-Gwen and Kate Bishop in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Hawkeye respectively.
  • Amber Stevens West and Zendaya screen-tested for the role of Ororo Munroe before Alexandra Shipp was cast. Zendaya would eventually go on to play Michelle Jones in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
    • Zazie Beetz also auditioned for the part of Ororo Munroe before the casting of Shipp. Beetz would later go on to portray Domino in Deadpool 2.
  • Idris Elba and Tom Hardy were considered for Apocalypse before the casting of Oscar Isaac. Elba previously played Heimdall in Thor, and Hardy would go on to portray Eddie Brock in Venom.
  • A part for Gambit was considered, but it was eventually scrapped.
  • Previous drafts of the script had a bigger part for Wolverine, with the character entering the plot midway through the movie and acting as a drill sergeant to the new X-Men. According to Simon Kinberg, his role was cut down because having another mentor figure for the kids would have made Mystique redundant.
  • The film was going to be titled Age of Apocalypse, but it got shortened to Apocalypse because of Avengers: Age of Ultron and Transformers: Age of Extinction. The fact that this movie has absolutely nothing to do with the Age of Apocalypse storyline probably helped too.
  • At one point, Charles was going to be the fourth Horseman.
  • In an IGN interview promoting Dark Phoenix, Michael Fassbender revealed that he had suggested the stress endured by Erik during the Auschwitz scene would result in him gaining his comic counterpart's iconic white hair, but the writers and director vetoed the idea.
  • Psylocke was planned to have a more practical black outfit, but Olivia Munn successfully argued for the classic purple leotard instead.
  • Jean Grey's costume originally looked more faithful to the comic book version.
  • Although the mall sequence was included as a deleted scene on the Blu-Ray, it's still missing a moment where Scott finds a Dazzler record.◊

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