The VFX Story Of The Movie X-Men: Apocalypse

X-Men: Apocalypse is a 2016 American superhero film based on the fictional X-Men characters that appear in Marvel Comics. It is the ninth installment in the X-Men film series and a sequel to X-Men: Days of Future Past. Principal photography commenced on April 27, 2015, in Montreal, Canada. In late August, the first-unit production for the film wrapped.  Additional filming took place in January 2016.

Australia-based Rising Sun Pictures provided, as it did for X-Men: Days of Future Past, the effects for Quicksilver’s time-stopping, quick motion effects in the mansion rescue scene, and also other effects, including when Cyclops splits Professor Xavier’s favorite tree in half. Aerial footage of snow-capped mountains as Stryker traveled in his helicopter to the secret base was provided by SmartDrones of St. Albert, Alberta, Canada.

Visual effects were covered by a range of companies and we spoke to three of them. Digital Domain, who handled the opening and who helped define the new Magneto ‘metals of the earth’ look starting at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland, Rising Sun Pictures, who nearly stole the show in the last X-Men film, returning once again to slow down time with Quicksilver and Cinesite, one of many companies who also contributed to this summer blockbuster.

X-Men Apocalypse was shot on the Red Epic and the Phantom Flex 4K for high speed photography. The DOP was Newton Thomas Sigel, who was also the Director of Photography on X-Men: Days of Future Past. The film was graded at Company 3 and delivered in both 3D and mono at 2.35: 1 aspect ratio. Most of the film was shot and made in Canada. Legacy effects provided the complex special affects suits. Most notably they made the elaborate suit of Apocalypse, worn by a nearly unrecognizable Oscar Isaac, ho most recently played Poe Dameron in Star Wars.

The visual effects were supervised on this film by VFX legend and multiple Oscar winners, John Dykstra. Among his many films, Dykstra was also on X-Men: First Class and he has previously worked with many of the vendor teams from around the world. Dykstra is a towering figure in visual effects, both literally at 6’4″ and in terms of his vast career. No doubt that the VFX and animation of this film took everyone by awe and set the bar very high for both VFX and animation.

His approach is to base everything, as much as he can, in the logic of something from the real world. Even if the effects are fantastic, the logic needs to hark back to something the audience knows from their own experience. While he isn’t constrained by real world physics he uses it as a baseline. He believes there needs to be ontology of the film that comes the everyday or an audience will not buy into the incredible visual effects of a film such as X-Men Apocalypse.