The initial reception to the appearance of Apocalypse, the villain of May 27’s X-Men: Apocalypse movie, was not a positive one, with most people pointing out his laughable resemblance to Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie villain Ivan Ooze.

The Voice

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The Color

Image Credit: Entertainment Weekly

The Size

Then when the trailer let audiences hear his voice for the first time, there was another wave of backlash because it was just actor Oscar Isaac’s unaltered voice instead of an inhuman, godly sound.On top of all that, comic readers were questioning why Apocalypse was so small. In the source material, he’s a hulking figure as it is, plus he can use his power to grow to King Kong-like proportions.During an edit bay visit IGN attended with other press, director Bryan Singer addressed these fan concerns.“[The first X-Men: Apocalypse trailer] was simply Oscar using his normal voice -- which is wonderful; his performance is fantastic -- but that was never the intention. We just needed those words to govern the first teaser. So people thought, 'Oh, wait, is that going to be his voice during the whole movie?' It's like, no, but to tell the story of the first teaser, we needed the voice, and I hadn't recreated the voice yet.“What I'm doing is something very unique. It hasn't been done before. We're rerecording his entire performance because the suit's creaky and makes all kinds of noise, you can't really use any of it anyway. But I want his performance. So he's being recorded in ADR using a standard Sennheiser microphone, but also with a bass mic to his right cheek and a bass drum mic to his left cheek. These two microphones have the ability to pull vocal range out of his voice that the human ear cannot hear. And I can take that vocal range that I've now recorded, and I can pull it and use it to augment his voice -- and that with a little digital magic can create a voice that's both completely governed by his performance but is not natural.“It ebbs and flows and moves through the movie, and changes, so he doesn't just have one single voice. He speaks with different voices depending on different moments in the film. So it's really kind of cool. It's the first time I've ever had the tools to sculpt a performance in post-production, that was already given to me on set and chosen in the cutting room."Hear Apocalypse's fully-rendered voice in the final X-Men: Apocalypse trailer:“There was an image released on Entertainment Weekly, where the effect hadn't been put in yet, so everyone was -- the effect has a pink light on it, and everyone got lit up pink, so people thought Apocalypse was going to be pink. I was like, 'No, no, they're all pink. Take a look. Everyone in the picture is pink. It's a pink picture.' They maybe just should have taken the pink out of the picture -- I should have taken the pink out of the picture. I'm going to take some blame for that. My fault, not Entertainment Weekly's. That's the picture I gave them.”It’s worth noting that all subsequent images of Apocalypse show him not pink, or Ivan Ooze-purple, but his appropriate color, blue.“So then people were like, 'He's small.' I'm like, 'Okay, I got the same s*** when I cast a six-foot-three actor to play five-foot-four Wolverine. I got the same s*** when Quicksilver's very sweet, 1970s costume was released on an Empire Magazine cover.' You know, every time. I could have made him a giant through the whole movie, or some muscle-bound guy who can't act -- I could always do that. But the reality is, among his many powers -- and you will see him change size -- but among his many powers is his power of persuasion, and it was very important that he'd be able to connect with his horsemen, at their level, and that he'd be played by a guy who can actually act like Oscar, who's a fantastic actor.”In the final trailer, Apocalypse isn’t any bigger in his “human” form, but his eyes are white (like in the comics) and he grows to gigantic size in a fight with Professor X, although that fight appears to be an “astral plane” battle of the minds. We'll have to wait until May 27 to see if he also uses those size-changing powers in the real world.

Joshua is IGN’s Comics Editor. If Pokemon, Green Lantern, or Game of Thrones are frequently used words in your vocabulary, you’ll want to follow him on Twitter @JoshuaYehl and IGN