Simon Kinberg , writer and producer of X-Men: Apocalypse, shared some new details with JoBlo about how James McAvoy’s portrayal of Professor X compares with Patrick Stewart’s iconic performance.
One of the first images to emerge from the set of X-Men: Apocalypse was of a bald Professor X, the sexy shag of X-Men: Days of Future Past and X-Men: First Class finally shed to make way for a more mature Professor X:
‘X-Men: Apocalypse’ Writer On New Professor X Portrayal
But Kinberg says that the Professor X of X-Men: Apocalypse isn’t just a retread of Patrick Stewart’s version. Here’s how Kinberg described X’s evolution:
"I think in this movie Charles is still really one of the main stories of the movie, but if that one was him sort of going from being hopeless to having hope, this one is in some ways him having too much hope at the beginning of the movie and becoming a little more hardened by the end of the film. Actually the Professor Xavier that we’re trying to arc toward at the end of this movie is slightly different than the Patrick Stewart Xavier we saw. You’re going from a guy who basically runs a school for kids and students to someone that’s gonna start a superhero fighting team. So X-Men: Apocalypse is, as Bryan Singer has said before, in many ways the origin of the X-Men and the notion of a guy who would, like I say, start a Freedom Force in the basement of his house."
‘X-Men: Apocalypse’ Trailer
Since X-Men: Days of Future Past end with a new continuity—similar to the dimensional offshoot that allowed for the NuTrek of Star Trek 2009—Professor X will be doing things a bit different this time around.
“A big decision we made is that because of the changed timeline of Days of Future Past, it’s not a world in which mutants are hiding or passing anymore, it’s a world in which mutancy is known and the Charles Xavier School for the Gifted wouldn’t be a secret school, it would be a much more open school,” Kinberg said. “The way we’ve imagined the school, the way we’ve written the school, the way we’ve shot the school is a brighter, happier place than we’ve ever seen before.”
So long as the Professor X of X-Men: Apocalypse isn’t that jerk who suppressed Jean Grey’s Phoenix and got his ass evaporated in X-Men: The Last Stand we’ll have something to look forward to when the new X-Men hits theaters on May 27.
