If you can’t handle the anticipation for X-Men: Days of Future Past – Bryan Singer’s adaptation of one of the best X-Men stories ever told, in theaters May 23, 2014 – then you’re probably going to go insane waiting for X-Men: Apocalypse, the follow-up movie that 20th Century Fox has just confirmed will be released on May 27, 2016.
See, Bryan Singer is even confirming it himself:
#Xmen #Apocalypse 2016!
— Bryan Singer (@BryanSinger) December 5, 2013
Speculation has already run rampant, but let’s be clear about everything we know right now. X-Men: Apocalypse is going to be released in theaters on May 27, 2016. Also, it has the word “Apocalypse” in the title. Bryan Singer knows about it. He may or may not direct. That is all.
We can infer nothing, but we can wildly speculate, so let’s get that out of the way now.
The X-Men movies have a history of very loose adaptations – even with supposedly sacred material like God Loves, Man Kills, which became the very basic framework for X2: X-Men United – so there’s no guarantee that the most famous and, by far, the most popular Apocalypse storyline, Age of Apocalypse, will make it onto the big screen. The story arc – which took place in an alternate reality where Professor Xavier died before he could form the X-Men, inspiring Magneto to unite mutantkind to defeat the wold-conquering villain Apocalypse – did involve time travel, so some are speculating that the finale of X-Men: Days of Future Past, which involves Wolverine going back in time to save the future from an entirely different disaster, could lead directly to a cliffhanger in which Wolvie finds himself in a world ravaged by Apocalypse after returning from his time-changing adventures.
Which would be really, really cool, but we have no idea if that’s what’s going to happen. For all we know, X-Men: Apocalypse will be about the X-Men just hanging around their mansion, finding out there’s a new mutant named Apocalypse starting shit somewhere out there the world, and then heading over there to kick his ass.
But… we can hope, because Age of Apocalypse would make a badass movie, and honestly, it’s about time that all these superhero movies delved into the same alternate reality well that comic books themselves fell into decades ago, and from which they never bothered to extricate themselves, because alternate realities – though confusing – are really neat.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
