Our first real glimpse at Oscar Isaac's character from X-MEN: APOCALYPSE came yesterday and I think it's safe to say that his reveal wasn't met with the universal praise that Bryan Singer and company had hoped for. Everyone and their aunt has chimed in as to how the costume could be improved or changed but keep in mind that designing the villain's look was a real group effort and that the costume went through more than a few changes before settling on what we saw yesterday.
Oscar Isaac spoke with Entertainment Weekly about his costume:
We had to do some adjustments here and there and be like, alright, maybe this is too alien, he also is someone who people would want to follow and not just be terrified of. So the balance, and then making sure that there’s some great elements from the comic but also making our own thing as well. In the comic, he generally is like 12 feet, 600 pounds.
I'm no X-Men scholar by any means but even I was a little disappointed with how the fabled villain will appear in X-MEN: APOCALYPSE, but if we're to learn from past assumptions (Quicksilver), we should remember that seeing a still image of a character is a very different thing from seeing that character in motion with a talented actor giving a performance. The talented actor in question, Oscar Isaac, has been a fan of the X-Men since he was a kid and started collecting the comics right around the same time that Apocalypse first arrived on the scene.
I grew up reading the comics and I actually collected X Factor when I was younger and that was when Apocalypse first showed up, and I was particularly freaked out with like the second coming and the end of the world, the apocalypse, so when there was a character that embodied that, and even from Sunday school, I remember the four horsemen and all that kind of imagery that’s still to this day some of the scariest imagery I can think of.
As the film is still shooting, Oscar Isaac couldn't give out many details but he did tease that the final battle of X-MEN: APOCALYPSE will be pretty insane as it's "freaking Apocalypse fighting all of the X-Men." Disappointment aside, that sounds pretty damn cool, but we'll have to wait until May 27, 2016 to find out if Bryan Singer can pull it off.