A FILM MAKER
American film director, producer and screenwriter.
Bryan Singer
THE AWARD
Received 2000 Saturn Award for Best Direction.
X-Men
X-Men Directed by Bryan Singer
Bryan Singer: Best director; Take 4
Jack the Giant Slayer
Bryan Singer, director of X-Men and Superman Returns, took some time out to visit the land of the giants in Jack the Giant Slayer (2013) before getting back to his X-Men sequel. In a new epic take on the Jack and the bean stalk tail, he directs Nicholas Hault as Jack, a farmhand who must rescue a princess (Eleanor Tomlinson) from the evil giants after unwittingly opening a gateway to their land in the clouds. An ancient war is rekindled, as the towering titans are once again roaming the earth and seek to reclaim the land they lost long ago. Jack sets off on an adventure with the kings guards (Ewan McGregor as Elmont, Stanley Tucci as Roderick and Eddie Marson as Crawe) to save his people and rescue the princess, summoning bravery to drive out the invading giants.
Singer caught the bug to do something involving fantasy adventure when he watched the shooting of King Kong with Peter Jackson. It was a chance for him to do something completely different from his previous repertoire. In an interview he said his inspiration for the dark tone of the film came from ‘films like Jurassic Park and Raiders of the Lost Ark, mixing the acting style of Princess Bride with violence level of Indiana jones and the kind of adventurous visuals of a Ray Harryhausen picture’. Singer delivers a clever spin on a familiar fairy tale, full of carnage and mayhem with sly humour. He incorporates real life characters with 25 foot tall CG giants but it doesn’t feel like you’re walking into a big CG animated world, it feel like it’s happening in the real world and is entirely plausible that one might ascend a giant bean stalk into a sky of mythical giants. Perhaps this is why it was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Director, a Key Art Award for Best Display and Phoenix Film Critics Society Award for Best Visual Effects.
Bryan Singer- X-Men Apocalypse
After X-Men Days of Future Past (2014), the most ambitious and top box office earner in the mutant superhero series, Singer needed to bring something even bigger in the franchise’s next instalment. In the final rendition that Singer would bring (so far at least) X-men apocalypse (2016), Singer says he took what he knew from studying religion and cults and created the new villain.
Apocalypse is the sixth mainline instalment to the series, but set in 1983 it follows the awakening of the first Ancient Egyptian mutant ‘En Sabah Nur’ (Oscar Isaac) after a millennia entombed. He believes humanity has lost its way and aims to destroy and remake the world with the help of four mutants- Ororo Munroe (Alexandra Shipp), Psylocke (Olivia Munn), Angel (Ben Hardy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender). With the fate of the world in uncertainty the only chance of salvation is for Professor Xavier (James McAvoy) and a team of young X-men to stop their greatest nemesis.
Singer’s focus is on the characters in this movie, the villain differs from the previous X-men films. En Sabah Nur once worshiped as a god, makes no distinction between humans and mutants, he doesn’t fight for either side but for dominance over earth. He is vengeful and takes claim for being the father of society and faith, and wants to build the world from scratch. As Singer grew up as a Jewish only child in a catholic neighbourhood, the X-men franchise about mutants and outcasts holds a special place with him and his passion allows him to delve into the characters. In Apocalypse, Singer does something that no other franchise has done, he alters time so it concludes but has also sown the seeds for the characters destiny’s which links to them in the first three X-Men movies. Apocalypse is the finale of six movies whilst being an in-between movie that happens in 1983.
Singer was once again nominated as ‘Best Director’ at the Saturn Awards and the film nominated for ‘Best International Film’ at the Jupiter Awards. X-Men: Apocalypse is the third-biggest X-Men movie worldwide making three times its budget. It was one of the biggest grossing movies of 2016 and, with $534.5 million worldwide, the second-biggest live-action grosser of the summer.