The internet has a way of dealing with things – backlash and complaining without any thought or reason. And, naturally, that’s what happened with X-Men: Apocalypse‘s marketing campaign regarding the various reveals of the villain Apocalypse.
The first reveal, an image of Oscar Isaac portraying Apocalypse in normal makeup with no additional post production effects, was met with extreme negativity. “Too purple,” people said. “Looks like a Power Rangers villain,” they said. Next up people were displeased with Isaac’s supposedly normal voice in the first teaser – a result of, again, incomplete post production work. Director Bryan Singer had this to say in response –
“[The first X-Men: Apocalypse trailer] was simply Oscar using his normal voice — which is wonderful; his performance is fantastic — but that was never the intention. We just needed those words to govern the first teaser. So people thought, ‘Oh, wait, is that going to be his voice during the whole movie?’ It’s like, no, but to tell the story of the first teaser, we needed the voice, and I hadn’t recreated the voice yet.”
The director continues to elaborate on the process:
“What I’m doing is something very unique. It hasn’t been done before. We’re rerecording his entire performance because the suit’s creaky and makes all kinds of noise, you can’t really use any of it anyway. But I want his performance. So he’s being recorded in ADR using a standard Sennheiser microphone, but also with a bass mic to his right cheek and a bass drum mic to his left cheek,” he explained. “These two microphones have the ability to pull vocal range out of his voice that the human ear cannot hear. And I can take that vocal range that I’ve now recorded, and I can pull it and use it to augment his voice — and that with a little digital magic can create a voice that’s both completely governed by his performance but is not natural.”
So, the voice will indeed be different than his natural voice used in the first teaser thanks to the possibilities of digital technology. He further explained:
“It ebbs and flows and moves through the movie, and changes, so he doesn’t just have one single voice. He speaks with different voices depending on different moments in the film. So it’s really kind of cool. It’s the first time I’ve ever had the tools to sculpt a performance in post-production, that was already given to me on set and chosen in the cutting room.”
He then discussed the first image which revealed Oscar Isaac in his Apocalypse makeup:
“They maybe just should have taken the pink out of the picture – I should have taken the pink out of the picture. I’m going to take some blame for that,” he said – explaining that the picture simply had too much pink lighting that affected all of the colors for everyone included and that the finished product will show a blue Apocalypse.
Naturally, fans are very passionate, and naturally people on the internet love to complain so it can be easy to become frustrated and lash out on an upcoming and highly anticipated film, but sometimes people just need to wait and see what’s in store.
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