X-Men: Apocalypse cast a dark cloud over Super Bowl 50.
A new trailer for 20th Century Fox's superhero movie debuted during a commercial break, and it proved to be darker than the film's previously released footage. Director, writer and producer Bryan Singer assembled an all-star cast of newcomers that includes Lana Condor as Jubilee, Tye Sheridan as Cyclops, Kodi Smit-McPhee as Nightcrawler and Sophie Turner as Jean Grey. The four students look to Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) to help them master their mutant powers.
Meanwhile, the world's first and oldest mutant, Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac) awakens after several millennia and recruits a team of his very own, known as the Four Horsemen: Magneto (Michael Fassbender), Archangel (Ben Hardy), Psylocke (Olivia Munn) and Storm (Alexandra Shipp). The immortal and invincible villain wants to destroy the world, and it's up to the X-Men to stop him.
Easier said than done, of course.
Other returning actors from the X-Men franchise include Rose Byrne as Moira MacTaggert, Josh Helman as William Stryker, Nicholas Hoult as Beast, Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique, Evan Peters as Quicksilver and Lucas Till as Havok..
For those unfamiliar with Apocalypse's role in Marvel history, allow Singer to fill you in." We've always treated this theme of mutants vs. humans, and Apocalypse has two aspects that make him such a different character than I've traditionally explored in the universe," he tells Slash Film. "One is that he makes no distinctions between humans and mutants. He's interested in the Earth as a whole and the purity of civilization and the strongest [beings]. And secondly it deals with ancient mutantism, or the origins of the mutant state, or the origin of gods and religion."
Apocalypse has acquired "a number of different powers" over the years. "One of them is to imbue other mutants and to heighten their powers and abilities. Secondly, he can shield from psychic powers; he can form shields so that it makes it harder for a psychic like Xavier to tap in and get to them. He's not a psychic himself though. He can amplify your power, transform you as a mutant but his ability to physically damage, destroy or build is in the non-biological world."
However, Singer thinks Apocalypse's greatest asset is his "power of persuasion." He possesses "the ability to know what he needs and who he needs it from and to get it from them, as he does with the horsemen, and as he has through civilization after civilization for tens of thousands of years."
X-Men: Apocalypse is in theaters May 27.