Well, if you thought the whole Marvel Cinematic Universe crossover orgy was going to be ending any time soon, Simon Kinberg just put your dreams, or possible nightmares, to rest. Speaking to MTV at the Toronto International Film Festival, where he's representing The Martian, which he produced, Kinberg said that he has plans to "cross-pollinate" the universes of post-Days of Future Past X-Men, Gambit, and Deadpool. That unfortunate, kinda gross terminology aside, this isn't necessarily a big surprise for people who have been keeping up with the doings of Kinberg and the MCU (read: most Americans). Mind you, Kinberg was responsible for roping in as many characters as humanly possible in his script for the absolutely wretched X-Men: The Last Stand.
Here's what Kinberg had to say at TIFF:
“The idea is that we’ve sort of reset the timeline after ’Days of Future Past’ in some ways, and if not erased, certainly allowed for change from ’X1,’ ’2,’ ’3,’ everything from ’Days of Future Past’ forward, 1973, everything we set now becomes canon...So the ’Gambit’ movie, the ’Deadpool’ movie, will exist in a world that acknowledges whatever happened in ’Days of Future Past’ and moving forward. Doesn’t mean they’ll always interact with those characters, obviously, it’s not like every movie has all the characters, but they all have to exist within the same rules...There will be interplay between different characters in different movies.”
He went onto admit that the only way he can really keep up with the timing in the crossovers is via a chart that he attentively updates constantly:
“I don’t have it up on a wall, but I have it on my computer, and I have it sort of tattooed on my brain now too...Nothing external, so that if I get knocked over the head, no one can read it. It’s literally behind my eyelids. But yeah, we have a clear sense of the directions we want to take them in and in my my mind at least, how we could start to cross-pollinate sort of with those characters that have their standalone movies.”
He finally concluded by attempting, without much success, to defend the look of Apocalypse in the trailers and images of the forthcoming X-Men joint, which has rightfully been met with a great deal of derision. As good as I'm sure Oscar Isaac is in the role, the Apocalypse I saw in the trailer looks more like the intergalactic god of the demonic trolls from Ernest Scared Stupid than the greatest team of super-powered mutants to ever be dreamed up.
Here's what Kinberg had to say about the Apocalypse design:
“I feel like we have been, the ’X-Men’ franchise, has been growing a little bit more into science fiction. I think ’Days of Future Past’ with time travel and the Sentinels took us into a slightly broader, more science fiction world than the films had occupied in the past...We felt like the movies were ready for something that was slightly more, let’s say, cosmic. Once we made the decision for Apocalypse to be the villain at the center of the movie, we wanted to be true to the comics, which are sort of, like you, say, not costume, but it’s not just a guy in a helmet. It is more cosmic.”
X-Men: Apocalypse comes out on May 16th, 2016, while Deadpool will see release on February 12th, 2016 and Gambit will see release on October 7th, 2016.
