Oscar Isaac is getting ready to become a part of two huge film franchise. First, he’ll be a part of the cast of J.J. Abram’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Then he’ll play the titular villain in Bryan Singer’s X-Men: Apocalypse.

Esquire asked the actor who he’s going about preparing for these roles.

“You find something that makes it interesting for you,” Isaac says. “With X-Men, it's about why this woman who invented Apocalypse, [writer] Louise Simonson, she was tasked with: make a new arch-villain. She said, ‘OK, I'll make the embodiment of the Second Coming with the Four Horseman and all.' That's scary sh*t. So I'm curious about that. What's the philosophical expression behind the apocalypse? What apocalypse means, which comes from the Greek for ‘to reveal.’ To lift back the curtain.”

And as for Star Wars?

“I try to go with the dumbest most literal thing first,” he says. “‘Apocalypse—what's the name apocalypse?’ With Star Wars I was like, ‘War! It's a war.’ So I read about being a pilot in a war. What was that like?

“So you go back. All sci-fi is about being a human being. All of it is. If it's made by humans, it's about being human. So I try to take it back to the original need for the expression. Where could that have come from? You trace it back.”

Star Wars: The Force Awakens opens December 18, 2015.

X-Men: Apocalypse opens May 27, 2016.