X-Men: Dark Phoenix director explains what went wrong with Apocalypse

'It became about global destruction and visual effects over emotion and character'

Despite featuring an incredible cast — Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence, Sophie Turner, Oscar Isaacs —X-Men: Apocalypse was met with relative disdain by critics and fans alike.

The movie’s writer/producer Simon Kinberg has since opened up about why the movie failed to meet the high benchmark previously set by the often excellent series.

"I think we took our eye off what has always been the bedrock of the franchise which is these characters," he told Entertainment Weekly. “It became about global destruction and visual effects over emotion and character.”

Kinberg will helm the upcoming sequel, Dark Phoenix, which hopes to act as some course correction. The producer behind the next X-Men instalment, Hutch Parker, was also candid about Apocalypse’s faults.

"It's always dangerous if your script is evolving while you're shooting, he said. "Certainly, in hindsight, we all feel like the genre has been evolving aesthetically and tonally and that the film didn't.

“There's a lot that I think is very good in the film but, as a whole, it was struggling to find ways to coalesce, narratively emotionally and in terms of plot. Aesthetically, it felt sort of dated relative to an evolution you were seeing play out everywhere else. We learned a lot from that.”

Earlier this week, the first images from the upcoming sequel were released, featuring a fiery Sophie Turner and mysterious Jessica Chastain.

Set ten years after Apocalypse, in 1992, the X-Men have become national heroes in Dark Phoenix, Professor X even being on the cover of Time magazine. However, on one particular journey which heads into space, a mysterious force — the titular Phoenix — merges with Turner’s Jean Grey. Chastain plays Lilandra, who attempts to capture and destroy Phoenix.

The storyline borrows heavily from the comic-book storyline "The Dark Phoenix Saga" which was previously shown in X-Men: The Last Stand. The movie reaches cinemas 2 November 2018.