Oscar Isaac Had An Excruciating Time Filming One Of His Most Popular Movies
Oscar Isaac had a truly horrible time making one of his biggest movies.
This article is more than 2 years old
In the ranks of Marvel’s mutants, few are as powerful as the ancient Apocalypse. But according to a recent interview, Oscar Isaac learned that the power of Apocalypse comes at a steep price.
Teased in a post-credits scene of 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past, En Sabah Nur — aka Apocalypse — makes his live action film debut in the 2016 follow-up X-Men: Apocalypse, played by Oscar Isaac. Power-level wise, the ancient mutant makes powerhouses like Magneto (Michael Fassbender) look like Howard the Duck. But one of Isaac’s co-stars couldn’t help but notice that the guy behind all the intimidating makeup was barely standing.
Tye Sheridan — who plays Cyclops in Apocalypse, Deadpool 2, and X-Men: Dark Phoenix — was reunited with Oscar Isaac recently for the crime drama The Card Counter. Isaac plays a card-counting gambler while Sheridan plays Cirk, a young man who’s looking to recruit Isaac’s character in a plan for vengeance. Speaking to Looper, Sheridan said that even from afar, it was obvious that Isaac was suffering under all the prosthetics. Sheridan said he felt bad for Isaac, because they were filming in the muggy summer weather of Montreal. He said that because of Isaac’s outfit and prosthetics, the actor couldn’t even sit down during breaks, but could only kind of lean on a special stool-like saddle made for him.
According to Oscar Isaac’s 2018 conversation with GQ, Sheridan had good reason to feel bad for his co-star. Isaac called the experience “excruciating” and went on to describe a gig that was not only physically painful, but isolating. Isaac said he was stuck in a 40-pound suit of “glue and latex,” explaining that in between takes he was rolled into a cooling tent. He also said it was frustrating because in the complex get-up, he couldn’t move his head, meaning he found himself in the middle of an ensemble group of wonderful actors like Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Evan Peters, James McAvoy and more, but couldn’t interact with them.
And of course what’s worse is that ultimately the thing that Oscar Isaac went through so much pain to make is generally considered one of the worst of the X-Men films, as evidenced by its 47% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Though, to be fair, those criticisms didn’t stop the flick from making half a million dollars.
Apocalypse also suffered an intense controversy over images heavily used in the advertising campaign. For some reason, the image chosen for heavy marketing in posters and billboards was of Oscar Isaac’s Apocalypse holding up and choking Jennifer Lawrence’s Mystique by the throat. Critics like Rose McGowan said that the images promoted casual violence against women. Eventually Fox apologized for the images and ordered the posters and billboards removed.
Now that Marvel Studios has the film rights to the X-Men, if and when Apocalypse ever gets brought into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Oscar Isaac doesn’t have to worry about being convinced to play the ancient mutant. Isaac has already signed on to play Marc Spector, aka Moon Knight, for the upcoming Disney+ series Moon Knight.
The Card Counter is in theaters now. The Crime drama stars Oscar Isaac, Tye Sheridan, Tiffany Haddish (Girls Trip), Willem Dafoe, and others. The Card Counter is written and directed by Paul Schrader. Schrader has either written or co-written classics like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Bringing Out the Dead.
