'X-Men: Apocalypse' Sets Stage For Second Marvel Universe On Film 

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\'X-Men: Apocalypse\' Sets Stage For Second Marvel Universe On Film

It’s a very mutant month this July, with the 15th anniversary of the

franchise coming right in time for San Diego Comic Con, where Fox unveiled footage from 

, the upcoming eighth film in the mutant series brand. The studio’s panel in Hall H also saw the reveal of the official logo for upcoming tie-in series

starring Channing Tatum, footage from the tie-in 

 film starring Ryan Reynolds, and the home entertainment release of the new 

If all of that wasn’t enough, the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly featured a cover story about

, including photos of some of the cast in full glorious costumes, plus some hints about the sequel’s plot and what it means for the franchise.

But wait, there’s still more, dear readers! A few days ago, director Bryan Singer confirmed to Yahoo News what many of us have known for a while (and I wrote about months ago) — Fox is indeed planning to cross over the

franchises. They’re of course awaiting official results of

opening weekend (August 7) and have downplayed buzz about the plans for tying their cinematic superheroes together, for now at least. But the studio and producers have taken tentative steps, including conversations with Singer himself about how best to merge the characters into a shared universe on the big screen.

Enough discussions, in fact, that the foundational concept has apparently already been selected. Singer said “time” is the idea behind how the two series can converge. I suspect he means more specifically “spacetime,” a concept already toyed with in the

will utilize as well. I’ll get back to all of this in a few moments, but for now let’s turn our attention to the next mutant movie sequel…

The grounded approach we’ve come to know and love in the

. However, Singer is using the film to sort of push the reset button on the series and develop a fuller origin for the entire team. Along with that, he appears to also be using this opportunity to adjust the overall style of the franchise, bringing it more in line with its comic book superhero source material. The latest images from the film reveal costumes and makeup of a decidedly brighter, tighter variety than we’ve seen so far in

films, giving the impression the series is taking a subtle cue from the Marvel Cinematic now that audiences have embraced comic book culture in a way that didn’t exist when the first

to shift gears away from all the things that made the previous movies so great. Rather, it’s that earlier in the previous decade, with the superhero genre barely hanging on due to some high profile meltdowns in the mid-to-late 1990s, the

series smartly avoided any surface appearances of similarity with those other sorts of comic book adaptations. Hence the lack of colorful spandex uniforms and the desire to create a more realistic world in which the characters could exist.

Marvel has since kicked the door wide open for movies to stop avoiding the more overt trappings of comics, though, and while I don’t remotely mean to imply Singer is mirroring Marvel’s approach, he has more freedom to flat-out depict the comics in a more direct way because audience now realize you can have great, grounded storytelling that also more literally looks and feels like a comic book.

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