Apocalypse is well-known in the comics for having four Horsemen that do his bidding. In the upcoming film, X-Men: Apocalypse, not much has changed. Magneto, Storm, Psylocke, and Angel serve as the first mutant's lackeys, but according to writer and producer Simon Kinberg, Psylocke wasn't always supposed to make the cut. In an interview with Cinemablend, Kinberg explained how original drafts of the script really only featured three primary Horsemen, with Apocalypse kidnapping James McAvoy’s Professor Xavier with the aim of getting him to switch sides. "The one person we didn’t know was Psylocke, and the reason why is because originally in the script we sort of… I don’t know why we made this decision, but we knew that Professor X was abducted in the middle of the movie, and we thought that almost counted as a fourth Horseman. And so that’s the way we constructed the original draft of the script. There wasn’t going to be a fourth one. The ‘surprise’ was that Xavier was the fourth Horseman. And then when we were working on the script, Bryan and I at one particular point – pretty late in the process – said, ‘He’s not really a Horseman – he’s not doing anything in the third act of the movie.’" It's interesting now to think that we may have seen a completely different dynamic in the film with both Xavier and Magneto working together under the sway of Apocalypse.
With this decision , Kinberg felt it was wise to pick a fourth Horsemen, corresponding with the four sides of a pyramid, which Apocalypse creates to serve as his base of operations. The team settled on Psylocke, as they found her to be the most interesting character. "We started talking about who that would be, and just literally looked at the list of different Horsemen over the history of the comics, and Psylocke was the one we thought was the most intriguing. And, ironically, or as fate would have it, I had just met with Olivia Munn about Deadpool - like a week or two before. And Bryan and I were up in Montreal, and I said, ‘You know, Olivia Munn could be an interesting Psylocke,’ so we went on the internet and Googled her images. And one of the first things that popped up was a piece of fan art of Olivia as Psylocke."
There you have it folks; it seems fan-casting does pan out sometimes! Granted, it may not sit well with fans that Kinberg and Singer seemingly chose Munn more for her resemblance to the character as opposed to her acting ability, but we'll have to wait until the film's release to find out!
What do you think of Kinberg's decision? Would you have liked to see Xavier as a Horseman over Psylocke? Sound off below! X-Men: Apocalypse releases May 27th.