Simon Kinberg: X-Men: Apocalypse Will Have A Lot More Mystique

Writer Simon Kinberg reveals that Mystique will have a bigger role to play that ties in with Erik and Charles different philosophies.

Since the release of X-men: Days of Future Past back in May, it has because the most successful entry in the franchise to date. It raked in an impressive $746 million worldwide and Fox inevitably greenlit a sequel. The mutant saga will continue with X-men: Apocalypse with the story continuing on from 2011’s (unofficial) reboot, First Class, and also the ‘past portions of DoFP.

With Apocalypse being the unofficial closing of the latest round of X-men movies, Kinberg and Bryan Singer are planning to go to town with the finale. So, as we have it, First Class introduced us to the initial surge of mutants, DoFP integrated them with established names like Wolverine and Storm, which leaves us with the question – who will be in the spotlight for Apocalypse?

Talking to Collider, Kinberg revealed who we can expect in the spotlight, and spoke in some detail about character arcs:

“I will say that [X-Men: Apocalypse] is definitely the close of a trilogy for those First Class characters, which isn’t to say we won’t see them in future movies, hopefully we will, but it’s a completion of an arc for them. I think that the friendship between Erik and Charles, which has always been so integral to the franchise, is something we’re continuing to explore and hopefully deepen with Apocalypse. And the relationship between Beast and Mystique is a really interesting one that we didn’t have a lot of time to explore in Days of Future Past, so we’ll have an opportunity to do more of that in Apocalypse.”

“Part of what’s really interesting about Mystique’s character is that she is, in some ways, the child of both Erik and Charles. She grew up with Charles and then she sort of became a woman with Erik, so her being the cross-pollination, if you will, of those two philosophies and those two men is something we can explore in the movie too.”

It seems like a clever move as Mystique has been brought up with mixed and contradictory philosophies. With DoFP, there was such an ensemble case, which means it was hard to focus on any ‘one individual character’ without suffering from character collateral damage. Thus, we weren’t able to fully reflect on Mystique’s transformation. So, triangulating the relationships between Mystique, Erik and Charles and exploring that dynamic will adequately set Mystique up as pseudo spawn between them.

Unfortunately more screen time for one character can equal far less screen time for another when it comes to editing the final movie and Anna Paquin’s Rogue wasn’t so lucky in the last instalment with her part being reduced to a non-speaksing cameo. The directors cut that is due out early next summer will address this issue by restoring much of Paquin’s scenes.

X-Men: Apocalypse opens on May 27th, 2016. Are you happy with more Mystique? Or perhaps you would have liked another mutant to be in the spotlight for Apocalypse? Sound off in the comments section below.