Various websites posted the details of their visits to the Montreal set of Bryan Singer’s X-Men: Apocalypse this morning, and although much of the coverage was recycled news, there were a few interesting nuggets of information unearthed, along with two new images of half of En Sabah Nur’s Four Horsemen.
We had been led to believe that Apocalypse gathers his followers to him through manipulation and coercion, but based on what Michael Fassbender (Magneto) and Olivia Munn (Psylocke) had to say, it may not be quite that simple. Both actors’ comments suggest that although the God-like mutant chooses to recruit them when they’re at the lowest point in their lives, they ultimately go along with him of their own free will.
Here’s what Munn had to say about Psylocke’s first encounter with the villain:
“[Apocalypse] first meets her and she’s the bodyguard. She’s got this amazing skill and she has zero fear when she goes against him, so he needs her. What he sees in her is that she is someone who can protect and has no fear and is an amazing fighter and has amazing abilities. She’s doing things because she wants to do them. She’s like, “I want to join you. You haven’t fooled me into joining you. I get it, I see what you’re doing, and I want to be part of it.” In the end, they manipulate her, but it’s always her choice to join it.”
Meanwhile, Fassbender implies that the urge to follow a power that could give his life some meaning again is too much to resist:
“[Apocalypse] arrives and it’s like, “Okay well something much more powerful than me has arrived,” in a way kind of like a god; he’s the original mutant. And I think… Magneto doesn’t really follow anyone, so it was kind of a hard thing like, well how does he just become one of Apocalypse’s Horsemen, and is he cool with that? But he appreciates that this guy is going to do what he couldn’t do. He’s got just so much more power than him, he’s such an immense force. In a way, it’s like that classic thing of joining any cult or radical group, he’s caught him at a very low, vulnerable point where he doesn’t really care anymore whether he dies or not or what happens, so he’s like, “Yeah I’ll join this guy. I’ll go on this path of judgment.”
X-Men: Apocalypse hits theaters on May 27, 2016.