8 Superhero Movie Concept Designs Better Than We Actually Got

5. Apocalypse (X-Men: Apocalypse)

X-Men Apocalypse Concept Art
Fox

Funnily enough, it wasn't the X-Men's costumes that managed to suffer the most in Apocalypse, but rather the eponymous villain himself.

Played by the formidable Oscar Isaac, there are few villains as renowned in the X-Men mythos. Apocalypse should've been the franchise's Thanos moment, but instead, Isaac's character ended up looking like a high-budget Ivan Ooze, doing little else in the story other than manipulating his followers and blowing things up.

The original design for the character, however, actually makes him look a whole lot more like his comic book self. Though the final Apocalypse from the film did retain more of his blue/pale comic book looks, there was something about the prosthetics that were all wrong.

The concept pictured above, however, gets everything right. He's sleek, sinister, and the look's accomplished without the pantomime element thrown in. An improvement all-round.

Advertisement
Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.