X-Men: Apocalypse Background Plot Details Revealed

Along with the first official images of new and returning franchise cast members in X-Men: Apocalypse, Entertainment Weekly also has the first details concerning the film's plot.

Apocalypse picks up ten years after the events of X-Men: Days of Future Past timeline (the 1970s portions, not the grimdark future), with Professor X (James McAvoy), Magneto (Michael Fassbender), and Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) still estranged from one another. Their paths are forced back together when Apocalypse awakens in his tomb and, finding the 1980s era wanting, decides to give the world a forced evolutionary jumpstart.

"It's a chaotic world of conflict and war and destruction," Singer says. "It's one giant civilization that now requires one giant culling. That's why he needs ­special assistants in this process."

Those assistants, his Four Horsemen, are mutants familiar to X-Men comics fan. Apocalypse finds Ororo Munro, a.k.a. Storm (Alexandra Shipp) on the streets of Cairo. Angel (Ben Hardy) is participating in a fight club in Berlin. Psylocke (Olivia Munn) is working in Eastern Europe for Caliban, a mutant power broker. The final Horseman is Magneto, who has been attempting to live a normal life in Poland with a woman he loves.

"He's fallen in love and he's basically left his metal ways behind," Fassbender says. "Apocalypse finds Erik at a low ebb and recruits him."

Meanwhile, Mystique has been helping to rescue oppressed mutants, including Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee), and becomes involved in the struggle against Apocalypse when she hears what happened to Erik. This leads her to Charles Xavier, whose school for gifted youngsters has grown significantly over the past decade. His students include young Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) and Scott Summers, a.k.a. Cyclops (Tye Sheridan).

Check out when X-Men: Apocalypse and other movies are coming out in ComicBook.com's Movie Release Schedule.