It’s been 10 years since Bryan Singer returned to 20th Century Fox to work on the franchise’s 9th film, X-Men: Apocalypse (2016). But even after all this time that’s passed, the film remains a controversial one. While we recently made the case that critics got it wrong and were too harsh on the film, a new interview with the film’s editor, John Ottman, reveals the real challenges behind the production. And it sounds like pure chaos.
Ottman, who worked as the film’s editor, composer and even got a producer credit, recently appeared on the Half the Picture podcast with host Billy Barnell and shared what we really all expected about X-Men: Apocalypse all along: the film didn’t have an ending when filming began.
“We have a film with no third act,” Ottman said honestly. “It was a beat sheet. It was like — so-and-so attacks so-and-so, and they die. This person somehow escapes. And then this person dies, and they win. That’s it.”
That probably explains why X-Men: Apocalypse opened to such mixed reviews from both critics and audiences. The film holds a 47% on Rotten Tomatoes critics’ score and a 64% Popcornmeter from audiences. And when you look back at previous films, like Days of Future Past, which has a 90% score across critics and audiences, that’s a pretty huge drop. Still, it did fairly well at the box office, making $542.5 million worldwide on a $178 million budget. That’s not bad, but it is lower than Days of Future Past’s $746 million box office gross.
Ottman’s comments may finally explain why X-Men: Apocalypse was the weakest entry in the relaunched X-Men timeline. It’s a remarkable admission for a film of that scale. Still, it wasn’t as bad as Dark Phoenix, The New Mutants or X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
Still, Ottman continued to point out that full scenes of the film were actually only conceived in the cutting room. Actors were called back to do reshoots and pickups where needed. But the worst part is that it became the norm for an X-Men production.
“There was this complacency,” he explained. “Like, ‘Well, everything’s going to work out fine, just like last time.’ Forgetting how that happened.”
Ottman described delivering pages of notes on the script before production even began, only to be waved off. When the production caught up with those problems mid-shoot, there was no easy fix. The film’s final battle, for example, was actually pieced together in real time. They decided who dies, who goes where, and how to logically position a large ensemble of characters in the editing room. “It’s always like a Rubik’s Cube,” he said. “You can’t have this person there because if they’re there, that person would — I can’t explain it, but it’s like an almost an impossibility to figure out where each character is going to be to make logical sense of the whole situation.”
Ottman also laughed off the film’s worst design – Oscar Isaac’s Apocalypse. Fans and critics found the character’s look completely underwhelming, too. “Apocalypse’s head — it’s like Frankenstein,” he said. Isaac himself has spoken publicly about his own disappointment with the role, having come in as a genuine X-Men fan only to find the production difficult and the character not quite what he had originally envisioned.
But, even with all that said, Ottman doesn’t believe the film was a complete failure. “It’s not a terrible movie. It’s a good film,” he said in the interview. His frustration with it simply lies in the production and its failure to fully prepare. Apocalypse was always a huge deal in the comic books and even the ’90s X-Men: Animated Series. So, for fans to hear that he didn’t get the attention he deserved here is very disappointing.
Ironically, while the live-action version struggled to make Apocalypse work, X-Men ’97 Season 2 appears poised to succeed where the film failed. With the character front and centre in the new animated season, which we reviewed here and which premieres on 1 July on Disney+, Apocalypse is getting the definitive screen treatment he never quite received in 2016. For some reason or another, the animated series has always understood the character in a way the Singer film never managed to. Or maybe they just treat him with the respect he deserves.
Whether or not you have made your peace with X-Men: Apocalypse, Ottman’s account is a fascinating window into the chaos that can unfold even on a big-budget studio production with a proven team.
X-Men: Apocalypse celebrated its 10th anniversary on 27 May 2026. You can watch the full Half the Picture interview with John Ottman on YouTube.
It turns out the film wasn’t missing a villain — it was missing an ending.
