Bryan Singer took on the ‘X-men’ franchise because as a gay man he could identify with the mutant characters.
The 50-year-old director-and-producer was interested in bringing the Marvel Comics characters to the big screen because the storyline theme of isolation for the mutant characters such as Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), Storm (Halle Berry) and Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) resonated with him and the way he felt when he realised he was homosexual as a teenager.
Speaking to website Collider, he said: "There was no concept. There was no template for it. Comic book movies had died, there was no concept of one as anything but camp. I took it on because I saw the thematics of it were interesting to me. I saw Xavier and Magneto as Martin Luther King and Malcolm X characters. I’m gay or bisexual, whatever, so that probably factored into it a bit because mutancy is discovered at that age in puberty when you’re different from your whole neighbourhood and your family and you feel very isolated. So that probably factored into my decision to do it to some degree at least, and I wanted to get involved in action-adventure and this was an avenue to do it."
The latest film in the franchise ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’ is his fifth and is out next month.
Singer keeps coming back to the series because he loves working with the crew and cast, which includes Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique, Nicholas Hoult as Beast and Michael Fassbender as Magneto.
He said: "I love the characters so I love coming back with actors and people I know, and I love ‘X-Men’.
"I try to get out because I have other ideas for other movies and things but I really love this universe and I love these characters, and I love these actors, we really had a great time. We really had fun on the last movie, they really got along great, and on this movie they’re getting along better and we’re having more fun, and I think they really liked ‘Days of Future Past’ so they have more trust in me. So that’s good, so you’re not just jumping into a situation with a bunch of a**-holes."
Bryan Singer: I identified with the X-Men because I’m gay
