Director and X-Men veteran Bryan Singer has finally broken his silence on the big cameo surprise that popped up in X-Men: Apocalypse. (Naturally, it wasn’t a huge surprise to anyone who saw the trailer, or indeed anyone really who has seen an X-Men film, but nonetheless we should probably say that spoilers follow for anyone who is yet to see X-Men: Apocalypse.
Still with us? Good. It was Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, of course, who makes an appearance in a spectacularly bloody scene towards the end of the film, depicting Logan escaping the hellish confines of his Weapon X prison. Singer had previously told us that “Wolverine was never a big part of the formation of the X-Men, so he can’t be in this story.” We now know that his pants were involved in an extensive conflagration, so to speak.
Jackman – who is winding down his stint as the iconic mutant, with a final solo movie due next year – was on board almost immediately. “I called him up and pitched it to him directly,” as Singer puts it. “It was a rare moment for an actor – usually they say, ‘I’ll think about that’, but he said, ‘no mate, it works brilliantly. Count me in’. I hung up the phone knowing I had a commitment for the cameo, which was unusual. He’s a friend, of course, but you commit to a small amount of time in the life of an actor, and that’s very hard to do.”
Despite the timelines being reset in X-Men: Days Of Future Past, Wolverine still ends up in the Weapon X project – something Singer ascribes to “time’s immutability,” explaining: “You can alter time and make ripples in time, but time tends to try to regroup and find where it was intended to go. My feeling with this movie is that it brings each character closer to their destinies.”
Singer praised Jackman’s commitment to even a small cameo that took two days to film (“It’s very important for Hugh that it be him doing the very physical stunts”). He also noted the rather nice circuitousness of Jackman’s final filmed shot, which sees Singer himself cameo as a security guard meeting an untimely adamantium end. “I did that on purpose,” says Singer, laughing. “It’s not my usual thing, but to do it with him and then to get a bear hug from a bloody, but very happy, Wolverine was great. It was very poetic.”
X-Men: Apocalypse is currently in cinemas – hear more from Bryan Singer in the brand new issue of Empire, on the shelves this Thursday.