Bryan Singer’s X-Men: Apocalypse has become a very crowded affair. As we have tracked the progress of the sequel, we’ve noted that the story will focus on Xavier (James McAvoy), Magneto (Michael Fassbender), Beast (Nicolas Hoult) and Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) – with appearances by several familiar mutants. Angel was rumored to be one of them, and now that is confirmed… only, with a twist.
Singer confirmed Angel’s presence in X-Men: Apocalypse in an interview with Empire, adding that, as expected, actor Ben Hardy would be playing the role. Then, he threw in this little nugget of information that sent our minds racing.
He’s not a very nice Angel! And that’s all I’ll say…
To back up this change of direction, Bryan Singer shared the following pieces of concept art for the newest version of this iconic X-Men character… and yep, he looks a lot more like Archangel than he does the traditional Warren Worthington III. Here is Angel with his wings intact:
And for some odd reason, here he is without his signature wings:
Does this mean that at some point in the movie, Angel will have his wings clipped? The idea behind Warren Worthington is that his mutation IS his wings. There shouldn’t be a wingless version of the classic character – unless we’re going to go down the very dark rabbit hole of the story where Angel has his wings removed, then makes a deal with Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac) to earn new wings back, becoming Archangel and serving as one of the villain’s Four Horsemen. If you remember, we did get a look at the Four Horsemen in the closing shot of X-Men: Days of Future Past, which first introduced us to a young Apocalypse. Singer’s comments may suggest that he’s willing to go sinister with his take on the conflicted Angel.
The sequel has to make room for a LOT of mutants, though. We have been reporting that X-Men: Apocalypse will have younger versions of Cyclops, Jean Grey and Storm, as well as Nightcrawler, Jubilee and possibly Psylocke. Let’s see how they all factor in when X-Men: Apocalypse opens on May 27, 2016.
