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X-Men: Apocalypse was filmed before anyone knew how it would end
The third act of the film was little more than a "beat sheet" according to editor and producer John Ottman
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Something that most people don’t realize about making movies is that you can end up with a totally different film after you finish the editing process. That goes doubly so if you don’t have a plan for how the movie will end when you start filming. When the editor of X-Men: Apocalypse first got the script, he had plenty of notes to share, the most alarming of which was that there was no third act.
John Ottman was a frequent collaborator with director Bryan Singer, having worked as composer and editor on several of the X-Men films. However, X-Men: Apocalypse was a bit of a departure for Ottman. As he revealed in a recent appearance on the Half the Picture podcast, he shared how the movie’s third act was little more than a beat sheet when filming started, meaning that no one really knew how the movie was going to end.
“So then when [X-Men:] Apocalypse came, there was this complacency,” Ottman explained. “’Well, everything’s just going to work out fine, just like last time!’ forgetting how that happened. And so, I was given the script, and I had like pages and pages of notes. It’s all in my self-interest, right? Because I see things that are going to blow up in my face and I gotta figure out how to solve them and I don’t want to do that… For my own sanity, I can’t let this script be the way it is. And [they’re like], ‘Oh, John. It’ll be fine. It’s gonna be fine. It’s not a problem, you know?’ And so we go into production, and we have a film with no third act.”
The third act, you might realize, is the ending of the movie, where all the plot threads start to come together for a huge, climactic battle for the fate of the world. “There was no third act. It was a beat sheet. It was a beat sheet. It was like, ‘So and So attacks So and So and they die. This person somehow escapes. And this person dies, and they win.’ That’s it. It was a beat sheet. I guess that’s not unheard of. It’s crazy, but I guess Marvel films that way too. They have no real ending yet, and they go and just wing it.”
Suddenly, James Gunn’s “we need a finished script before we start filming” policy makes a lot more sense.
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