While Marvel’s Avengers universe continues to spiral out into close to a dozen pictures, and DC’s Justice League universe begins its transformation into another tentpole camp worth billions and billions of dollars, 20th Century Fox’s X-Men films continue to be rather self-contained, and pretty damn consistent. Aside from the Wolverine spin-offs, the films have instead chosen the prequel route, to great effect. And the newest trailer for the upcoming X-Men: Apocalypse finds the franchise seemingly continuing its solid run.
Directed by Bryan Singer, who was behind the first X-Men, released all the way back in 2000, Apocalypse sees our mutant friends more fully splintering into two sides, those with ancient, world-destroying mutant Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac) and those against him. We see Magneto (Michael Fassbender) finally embracing his bad side while Professor Xavier (James McAvoy) is drained of his powers and nearly his life, maybe leading to his eventual paralysis. Because Xavier is out of commission, Beast (Nicholas Hoult) and Raven/Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) have to rally the young mutants and get them to fight back, which means that there’s a whole lot of mutants in this trailer!
We get to see Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee), Cyclops (Tye Sheridan), Jean Grey (Sophie Turner), and more Quicksilver (Evan Peters). There’s a bunch of people and a bunch of special effects and yet it seems like a more coherent plot than the things we’ve been seeing in Marvel’s jam-packed spectacles. Or maybe there’s just something more charming about mutants? Who knows — this is just a trailer, after all.
Watch the trailer below. The film is set for a May 27 release.