In the 1980s, the X-Men’s popularity led to a bunch of spinoff titles. The first batch included The New Mutants, which had a team of young trainees; Excalibur, a UK-based team; and X-Factor, a team that brought the original X-Men together (which required resurrecting Jean Grey). The latter had a mysterious foe dogging them, who was eventually revealed to be an ancient mutant known as Apocalypse. Created by Louise Simonson, Apocalypse was the bad guy in a bunch of the seemingly infinite number of crossover comics series that they did in the mutant titles, including the alternate-history crossover “Age of Apocalypse.”
He was a natural choice for a villain in an X-Men movie, and sure enough, they did one in 2016.
With the success of the “prequel” X-films, they decided to keep the theme going and jump another ten years, with a film that would truly show the final forming of the X-Men that we saw the mature versions of in X-Men back in 2000. This 1983-based film would have younger versions of the characters we knew from the more recent films, as well as several characters returning from the previous two films.
Among those returning from Days of Future Past are the big three of James McAvoy as Xavier, Michael Fassbender as Magneto, and Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique. Hugh Jackman returns for a cameo as the Weapon X version of Wolverine. And we’ve got Nicholas Hoult as the Beast, Lucas Till as Havok, Evan Peters as Quicksilver, and Josh Helman as Stryker. Also back from First Class is Rose Byrne as Moira MacTaggart.
Buy the Book
Alice Payne Rides
We meet younger iterations of several of the characters previously seen as adults: Tye Sheridan plays the young Cyclops (previously played by Tim Pocock in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and as an adult by James Marsden in four other films), Sophie Turner plays the young Jean Grey (previously played by Haley Ramm in The Last Stand, and as an adult by Famke Janssen in five other films), Alexandra Shipp plays the young Storm (previously played as an adult by Halle Berry in four other films), and Kodi Smit-McPhee plays the young Nightcrawler (previously played as an adult by Alan Cumming in X2).
New to this film are Oscar Isaac as En Sabah Nur, a.k.a. Apocalypse, Ben Hardy as a winged character called Angel who does not appear to be Warren Worthington III (for one thing, his wings have talons; for another, he’s killed), Olivia Munn as Psylocke, Tómas Lemarquis as Caliban, Monique Ganderton as Death, and Željko Ivanek as a Pentagon scientist.
Bryan Singer returned to direct the film, and he helped put the story together. Simon Kinberg—who also cowrote The Last Stand and Days of Future Past—wrote the script off that story. Kinberg—who is also one of the producers of the X-films now—will both write and direct Dark Phoenix in 2019. At present, McAvoy, Fassbender, Lawrence, Hoult, Sheridan, Turner, Shipp, Smit-McPhee, Peters, and Munn are said to be returning in Dark Phoenix as well.
“It’s all of us against a god!”
X-Men: Apocalypse
Written by Simon Kinberg & Bryan Singer & Michael Dougherty & Dan Harris
Directed by Bryan Singer
Produced by Lauren Shuler Donner and Bryan Singer and Simon Kinberg and Hutch Parker
Original release date: May 27, 2016
In ancient Egypt, roughly 3600 BCE, En Sabah Nur rules. He is a mutant, able to transfer his consciousness into a fresh body when he wears one out. In the midst of one transfer—the only time he’s vulnerable—a coup is engaged among his slaves. His pyramid is destroyed, and Nur is buried. However, one of his horsemen—Death—is able to use the powers Nur granted her to protect him from being crushed. However, he remains buried for 5600 years.
In 1983, CIA Agent Moira MacTaggart is investigating a cult that has built up around Nur, which is trying to resurrect him. She tracks down an underground lair where that resurrection actually happens, and MacTaggart barely escapes with her life.
Nur wanders the streets of Cairo, saving a young mutant thief named Ororo from having her hand cut off by her victims—those victims are, instead, killed brutally by Nur, who then boosts Ororo’s weather-controlling powers (which also turns her hair white). Ororo also points to a poster of Mystique, whom she considers a hero to all mutants.
For her part, Mystique doesn’t want to be a hero. She has been covertly rescuing mutants who are in trouble all over the world, and avoiding appearing in her natural form, not because she’s ashamed, but because she doesn’t want the adulation that now comes with it. In Berlin, she saves Kurt Wagner from a cage-match situation, where he’s fighting a winged mutant called Angel.
Magneto is living a peaceful life in a small town in Poland under an assumed name. He has married and has a child. He works at a smelting factory, and on the job, he is forced to use his powers to save a coworker’s life. Fearing for the life of him and his family, they pack to leave—Magneto is an international terrorist after trying to kill President Nixon ten years earlier. However, the local police find him and confront him (leaving their badges and guns home, armed only with bows and arrows). His daughter uses her own nascent powers (involving communicating with birds) to menace the cops, and one accidentally shoots an arrow that impales both Magneto’s wife and daughter. Magneto then murders all the cops.
Mystique brings Wagner to Caliban, who relocates mutants for a fee. Caliban tells her that he heard that Magneto was in Poland. Mystique recruits Wagner to teleport her there, but she’s too late.
Havok has a young teenaged brother, Scott Summers, who is also a mutant—in the middle of a school day, red beams of force fire from his eyes, and he can’t control it. The only thing that stops them is his eyelids. Havok takes his brother to Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, which is now a full-time school for training young mutants in how to use their abilities. Summers meets several other students and teachers, including McCoy (who has a fun reunion with Havok) and a redhead telepath/telekinetic named Jean Grey. Xavier takes Summers in, and McCoy fashions him a pair of glasses made of ruby quartz that hold his optic blasts in check.
Xavier has been using Cerebro to keep tabs on MacTaggart, which is actually pretty creepy. But he sees that she was in Cairo investigating Nur, and he and Havok go to Langley to consult with her. MacTaggart is thrilled to meet Xavier, because, of course, he erased her memory of him. They learn that Nur, according to legend, has been around a long time, may be the first mutant, and often has four powered beings as his “horsemen.” MacTaggart theorizes that he inspired the Bible story of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
Having failed to get to Magneto in time, Mystique brings Wagner to Xavier’s to tell him what happened. Wagner meets Summers and Grey and the three of them decide to go into town to see a movie. (They see Return of the Jedi, all agreeing that The Empire Strikes Back is the best film, and commenting that the third movie always sucks, har har.)
Maximoff has learned in the last ten years that Magneto is actually his father. He decides he needs to know more, and so digs up the bedraggled business card he got from Xavier a decade previous and heads to Westchester.
Xavier uses Cerebro to track down Magneto, but Nur has found him first. Nur has already recruited a mutant named Psylocke and the Angel as two more Horsemen, and Magneto is his fourth. His already-considerable powers supercharged by Nur, Magneto destroys Auschwitz, which proves rather cathartic.
When Xavier links with Magneto via Cerebro, Nur is able to follow that link back to Xavier. He teleports to the mansion and kidnaps Xavier. Havok tries to stop him, but he instead causes an explosion, er, somehow. Luckily, he does so just when Maximoff arrives, so he’s able to use his super speed to save everyone. Unluckily, he doesn’t arrive until Havok himself is vaporized in the explosion.
By a startling coinky-dink, Stryker arrives just then and knocks everyone out with a concussive blast—the only ones he misses are Summers, Grey, and Wagner, who are just returning from their movie. Stryker takes McCoy, Mystique, Maximoff, and MacTaggart, leaving the others behind.
Wagner is able to teleport himself, Summers, and Grey onto Stryker’s helicopter, while Grey telepathically keeps them from being detected. They fly to Alkali Base, where the trio work to try to free them—including freeing “Weapon X” from his cell. Logan, now with metal claws, makes short work of the guards. Grey is able to calm him and remove his bionic implants before he runs off into the woods.
Nur uses Xavier to broadcast a message to the entire world, and then has Magneto first launch every nuclear weapon in the world into space (we see several people watch this event, including a couple who look just like Stan and Joan Lee). However, Xavier also managed to sneak a telepathic message to Grey giving her his location.
Once all the mutants are freed from Stryker’s cell, they proceed to Cairo to rescue Xavier in a plane. Mystique waxes nostalgic about the first time she, Havok, Banshee, McCoy, Xavier, and Magneto went out as “X-Men” to fight the Hellfire Club two movies ago.
Magneto starts trashing the world’s infrastructure. Nur starts the process of transferring himself to Xavier—a process that removes all of Xavier’s hair—and then Wagner is able to teleport him away before it can be finished. Psylocke and Angel attack the plane our heroes are using, but Wagner gets Xavier and MacTaggart out before it crashes—Psylocke also saves herself, but Angel is killed.
Ororo attacks Summers and McCoy, while Maximoff and Mystique go after Magneto. Ororo is devastated to realize that her personal hero, Mystique, is fighting against Nur, and she starts to reconsider her position.
Mystique convinces Magneto not to keep working for Nur, and they all turn on him. Magneto, Summers, and Ororo fight Nur physically, while Xavier and Grey attack him on the astral plane. Eventually, Nur is defeated. Xavier restores MacTaggart’s memories, apologizing for erasing them in the first place. Grey and Magneto are able to reconstruct the school, but Magneto declines Xavier’s offer to stay and help him run it.
Xavier finally comes around to Mystique’s notion that he should revive the “X-Men” in addition to the school, and so he forms a new team: Summers, a.k.a. Cyclops, Ororo, a.k.a. Storm, Maximoff, a.k.a Quicksilver, Wagner, a.k.a Nightcrawler, and their field leader Mystique.
At Alkali Base, people in suits from the Essex Corporation arrive and confiscate a vial of Logan’s blood.
“The weak have taken the Earth”
I have to say up front that I have never liked the character of Apocalypse.
Part of it is the character started out as a villain in X-Factor, a comic book I have always found offensive, despicable, and wretched, at least in its early days.
A bit of a fannish digression here: X-Factor was created, as stated above, to bring the original X-Men back together. There are several problems with this notion:
1) It required resurrecting Jean Grey, thus reversing one of the most powerful comic books in Marvel’s entire history, Grey’s death in Uncanny X-Men #137. (Having said that, the actual method of resurrecting her, conceived by Kurt Busiek and executed by Roger Stern and John Byrne in the pages of Avengers #263 and Fantastic Four #286, respectively, was actually quite clever.)
2) By bringing Grey back, it required Scott Summers to not just leave the X-Men, but also to leave behind his wife and child, as in the interim he’d married a woman named Madelyne Pryor and had a child with her. While Pryor was later revealed to be a clone of Grey created by Mr. Sinister, and was transformed into the Goblin Queen to fight the X-Men, that doesn’t change the fact that the creation of X-Factor turned one of Marvel’s most noble heroes into a person who would abandon his family (including an infant child who was later kidnapped and sent to a dystopian future, eventually coming back in time and becoming Cable).
3) Beast, Angel, and Iceman were part of the Defenders, and so The New Defenders—a book that, in the hands of the creative team of Peter B. Gillis, Don Perlin, and Kim DeMulder, was one of the finest comics Marvel was producing at the time—was cancelled to make way for X-Factor.
4) The concept of X-Factor initially was that they would pose as mutant hunters who would be hired to capture mutants and bring them to their facility. In truth, they were rescuing those mutants secretly, but the concept is akin to Jews pretending to be Nazis, or African-Americans pretending to be part of the Ku Klux Klan. While they might do some good for individual mutants, they’re leaning into the discrimination against mutants and making things worse.
5) Everyone at Marvel forgot that the original X-Men were not popular. The book didn’t take off until the team was overhauled. Prior to that, it was the redheaded stepchild of the Marvel Universe, cancelled after 66 issues and relegated to reprints and occasional guest appearances.
Tellingly, X-Factor never kept a concept for more than a couple of years, as it was constantly being revamped, and it wasn’t long before the whole original-X-Men thing was (thankfully) abandoned.
But one big part of the early, awful days of X-Factor was Apocalypse, who was a spectacularly uninteresting villain. He was extremely powerful but with no real personality beyond megalomania. The best villains have some kind of personality trait that allows you ingress to them as characters—Magneto’s tragic backstory, Dr. Doom’s arrogance, Loki’s cunning, and so on. Apocalypse doesn’t have any of that, he’s just a really powerful blue dude.
This movie doubles down on the boring, as En Sabah Nur as played by Oscar Isaac is quite possibly the most uninteresting antagonist in this entire rewatch. We have no idea what his motivation is, no idea why he does what he does, no idea how he does what he does, he just, y’know, does it ’cause he’s evil and stuff.
On top of that, his actual threats are remarkably bloodless. We see Nur fire missiles into space, we see Magneto destroying property and bridges and things, but we get absolutely no sense of the danger to people. Every battle we see is in an inexplicably abandoned location. We see bridges and buildings destroyed, but get absolutely no indication of consequences. The closest we come is Havok’s death and the destruction of the X-mansion, but the latter is effortlessly rebuilt by Magneto and Grey at the film’s end as if nothing has happened.
This may be the most lifeless movie of Bryan Singer’s directorial career. There’s no excitement, no verve, no joy in it, and very little emotion. Most of the latter comes from Michael Fassbender, who absolutely sells Magneto’s anguish when he loses his family in Poland. It’s also visually repetitive, as the rescue of mutants from Stryker’s clutches is a less exciting rehash of the similar rescue in X2.
No effort is made to make Fassbender, James McAvoy, Nicholas Hoult, Rose Byrne, or Lucas Till look twenty years older than they were in First Class. No effort is made to make Summers’s transition from whiny teenager to future leader of the team in any way convincing. No effort is made by Sophie Turner to actually make Grey a compelling character. She’s supposed to be a struggling, tormented young woman, but she comes across instead as someone acting in a high school play who just wants opening night to be, like, over so she can go hang out with her friends. (Her performance, which is totally lacking in all luster, does not bode well for her upcoming focus in Dark Phoenix.)
Singer’s first X-film was one of the best superhero films ever done at the time it was made, the vanguard of a revolution in the subgenre that we’re still enjoying the fruits of eighteen years later. His last X-film (Simon Kinberg is scheduled to direct as well as write the next one) is one of the most bland and dull, two words I wouldn’t use to describe any of Singer’s other films (except maybe his first, Public Access). Even the wrongheaded Superman Returns was better than this dud.
After two promising films that indicated a return to glory for the X-films, the third film spit the bit. History does, indeed, repeat itself sometimes…
Next week we’ve got a special thing for the end of the calendar year. While this rewatch is firmly ensconced in the 21st century, there are a couple of 20th-century comic book hero movies your humble rewatcher overlooked. As we bid adieu to 2018, we’ll also be looking at a few older films. On Wednesday the 26th, we’ll examine 1985’s Red Sonja, followed by Dick Tracy from 1990 on Thursday the 27th, and finally on Friday the 28th we’ll take a gander at the Men in Black trilogy (1997-2012).
Keith R.A. DeCandido wishes everybody the happiest of holidays.
I really had nothing to add. The film was completely bland, a pity after the two previous ones.
I didn’t even realised Apocalypse was Oscar Isaac, honestly, I doubt anyone could have made that villain interesting.
Yeah I got little to say, only saw it once opening weekend and that was it…Ironic about the third movie of the trilogy being worst inside joke, and should be noted Apocolypse was voiced in the Fox cartoon series by the great John Colicos…Was wondering if you’d be doing Dick Tracy, wasn’t sure if it would fit your criteria or not…
“(Sophie Turner’s) performance, which is totally lacking in all luster…”
You’re being overly generous. ALL of her performances are lacking. She has the acting skill of a patch of lichen.
capt_paul77: I wasn’t going to include Dick Tracy originally, but given that I included both The Phantom and The Spirit, I couldn’t really justify not including it…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
X2 Nightcrawler was Alan Cummings, not Martin Cummins :)
Deena: yeah, someone on Twitter caught that, too. Mea culpa, and it’s been fixed. (Yay, edit function!) I went to college with someone named Martin Cummins, which is probably the source of my stupidity.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido, who hasn’t seen or thought of the guy he went to college with since he graduated 30 years ago, so that’s a feeble excuse, but whatever
100% agreed about your rant about early X-Factor, especially what it did to Cyclops. And about this movie.
The main thing Apocalypse has going for him is a pretty good design, which they completely failed to translate to film. What’s the point of hiring Oscar freaking Isaac if you’re going to bury him under that much ugly latex?
krad: Martin Cummins is an actor too (Kevin’s dad on Riverdale), so the name’s probably made the rounds lately!
Yeah this one was a big disappointment. I get that they felt they needed to up the ante after having the big bad be the sentinels in DoFP, but Apocalypse is, yeah, bland as a villain in general.
Then they tease Mr. Sinister in the post-credits scene, and decide that the next movie will be Dark Phoenix. Wonder if he’ll be involved at all in that?
Everything in this movie seemed like a rehash, too. When the Quicksilver-saves-people-by-running-fast montage came on, it was like “Ok this was the best scene from the last movie, so let’s do the same thing only more.” Then the “Breakout from Alkalai Lake” scene, a redux of X2.
I started writing another paragraph of complaints but realized it was unnecessary – the movie was a big “meh” all around. One coworker who went along with a group of us to see it fell asleep during it.
They should have actually made Apocalypse into Ivan Ooze. That would have been more entertaining.
The movie’s plot fell flat, and the final battle was boring. Apocalypse is crap (a wasted Oscar Isaac), Magneto as a horseman is insulting to the character (coincidentally, he’s in a similar situation in the comics right now), and the other horsemen were really flat. (It’s a minor quibble, but making Storm’s hair white because of Apocalypse’s powers is stupid. Seriously, what is it with this Apocalypse and people’s hair?)
I did appreciate seeing more Nightcrawler, and the costumes at the end. Hopefully, Dark Phoenix is better.
Men in Black TRILOGY? I just realized the other day that the upcoming MiB International is the fourth film… I never even saw the second one, and forgot there was a third film.
@8 – Deena: Martin Cummins was also villain Ames White in Dark Angel, so he’s got older genre credits.
I liked this film okay. It had its flaws; I agree the villain was underwhelming, and I’m so done with CGI mass destruction in Hollywood blockbusters. And I agree Sophie Turner was an unimpressive choice for Jean. And the lack of aging over 30 years between movies is bizarre. But I thought it worked okay where the primary character arcs were concerned. I didn’t love it, but I didn’t hate it.
I did like it that it ended with the team finally donning the ’90s X-Men costumes, and I’m disappointed that Dark Phoenix is skipping right over those to the drab Frank Quitely costumes from New X-Men.
@2/capt_paul77: While John Colicos played Apocalypse (magnificently) in most of the X-Men animated series, he was replaced in season 5 by James Blendick, who would go on to play Galactus in the Silver Surfer animated series the following year. By the way, Apocalypse was played in X-Men Evolution by David Kaye, who also played Xavier in that series.
@9/Kalvin: Turns out the “Essex Corp” tease at the end of this film was really more of a setup for Logan: https://www.cinemablend.com/news/1628949/a-surprising-connection-between-logan-and-x-men-apocalypse-has-been-revealed
As a life-long Betsy Braddock fan, I was crushed at how very lame they made Psylocke here. If we are going to let her stay with the psychic knife, fine enough, bit it isn’t actually meant to slice tangible physical matter. Fmeh.
Arguably the best part of this dreck was the new, juvenile Storm and her mohawk.
MaGnUs: Yup. The second MIB movie was in 2002, but was kind of a dud. The third movie, in 2012, was way more fun, with a delightful performance by Josh Brolin. There will be more detailed commentary, obviously, a week from now. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
At least the whole not aging thing is in keeping with the comics.
@13/LadyBelaine: I loved the new Storm too, but for superficial reasons; I think Alexandra Shipp is incredibly gorgeous, which makes her an excellent choice to take over from Halle Berry (whom I considered the most beautiful woman on the planet in her prime).
@15/olethros6: Good point. The sliding timescale lives!
Some comments that are basically just me whining about how bad a movie this was.
1) OK, I get it, A-Poc took over the missile crews and launched all the missiles into space.
a) umm, I’m decently sure a fully loaded Minuteman won’t make earth orbit, since its designed to go up and right back down, so no drifting off towards the moon or wherever.
b) what about all of the other nukes on the planet? Gravity bombs, mines, etc, that aren’t in silos and more importantly, don’t have crews standing by to fire/launch/drop them.
2) Is A-Poc the worst team builder in history? Look at his 4 horsemen. Magneto – controls metal – OK, he’s pretty badass. Storm – controls the weather – OK, that’s good too. Psylocke – has a mind sword – that’s not terrible but its a pretty short-range weapon with lots of weaknesses. And then there’s Angel – who . . . . flies? – that’s it? He . . . flies? Seriously? The best A-Poc can do for slots 3 and 4 is Psylocke and a guy who . . . flies?
3) The Wolverine cameo was horrible. Just . . . bad. What the hell was that thing he was wearing on his head and around his waist? And how exactly did every bullet fired at Wolverine hit him and not the fragile looking stuff he was wearing?
4) Sophie Turner. Sigh. Why did they pick her to be Jean Grey? I can just see Phoenix bombing when it releases.
5) Moira McTaggert, mind-wipe victim. What was Xavier thinking when he gave her memories back? Does he not know how immensely pissed she’s gonna be? If he thought A-Poc was bad, Moira is gonna rip his spine out with her bare hands. He’s an idiot for mind-wiping her, but an even bigger idiot for undoing it.
The next film’s versions are better than the Quitely costumes, at least. And perhaps they’ll use the individual costumes at one point. Plus, at least they’re not the Bryan Singer costumes…
This movie reminds me of the X-Men comics I grew up reading, so I have a bit of a soft spot for it, but, well, yeah.
Sophie Turner is much better here than in Game of Thrones. This is a backhanded compliment.
As blue villains go, Oscar Isaac as Apocalypse is better than Lee Pace as Ronan the Accuser. This is a backhanded compliment.
@17, the thing Wolverine was wearing in the movie looked pretty much like what he was wearing in the comics.
@15/16: Completely serious: I thought the lack of aging between films was a deliberate reference to the sliding timescale. I kept expecting one of the creators to explain that in an interview or behind-the-scenes, but to the best of my knowledge, none ever did. I was willing to give them credit for being clever, but I can’t find any evidence that they actually were.
Other than that, I agree with everything our host said, especially the X-Factor comic requiring the character assassination of Cyclops (from which I think he’s never recovered) and the deaths of most of the New Defenders.
On a personal note, I was reading marvel during the 80’s. With fond memories of doing so. I was reading X-factor and Classic nnd New X-men. (Anything with a mutant in it really) I remember Apocalypse, and I remember kinda liking him. He was a dim candle compared to Magneto, but his whole survival of the fittest ditribe was understandable. Sick and reprehensible, but I know where he was coming from and what his goals were.
Sinestro was one of the things that got me to quit comics for a while. (That and the Liefeld craze going on. Only so many open mouths I can look at until…) Man, talk about a villain for villain’s sake. I do what I do because I am EVIL. I understand they improved him later, but at the time I hated this motivationless tool.
But yeah, this movie left me a little flat. That is disappointing since I truly enjoyed the previous two. Sheesh, killing of Eric’s family like that to motivate him? I could come up with some other reasons, and I am not that good at writing. See above paragraphs.
I read a good chunk of the Age of Apocalypse story, and really enjoyed it. It was one of the first times a comic book made me cry. So I was kinda excited for this movie.
Ugh, what a let down. The only really good part was Magneto in Poland. Fassbender did a hell of a job during that sequence. Other than really liking the look of the new Storm (Storm is my favorite X-Man, and Berry’s performance is pretty awful), and wanting to see how she does, this movie is forgettable.
@17/ragnar: There’s comic-book precedent for Apocalypse recruiting Angel. In the “Fall of the Mutants” storyline, Angel was at a personal low, having been betrayed by his childhood friend, had his wings amputated, and then believed dead in an explosion. Apocalypse recruited him and transformed him into an “Angel of Death,” with blue skin and razor-sharp metal wings that could shoot deadly feathers coated in paralyzing neurotoxin. That was the first appearance of the Four Horsemen, so he leaned pretty heavily into the theme: War was a former soldier who’d been paralyzed in battle, capable of creating explosions; Pestilence was a mutant who could cause disease; Famine was a teenage mutant with the power to…destroy food, and make people really hungry. Warren, as Death, rounded out the bunch. Of course Angel wasn’t intended to stay evil, and once he’d recovered his senses, he now had a more useful set of powers (beyond “guy who flies”), and a tragic event that could cause him to be dark and broody, because it was the early 90s. Oh, and he called himself “Archangel” now.
Not a terrible movie but definitely below Bryan Singer’s usual standard (Great Quicksilver scene though)
So what was up with the look of Apocalypse in this? Were the filmmakers afraid if they went with his big muscleman look he would be confused with that other giant purple people eater in Marvel movies now? Or was it some other creative decision?
Either way, it’s a pity they couldn’t do something closer to the version from the old animated series, because Oscar Isaac’s version is about as intimidating as a ladybug.
@20 – BonHed: Yes, it looks like the control and monitoring equipment the Weapon X program put on him.
ragnarredbeard: the range of the missiles is irrelevant — Magneto was sending them into space, and he could make them go wherever he wanted. And, as BonHead and MaGnUs said, the machinery attached to Logan was a match for what Barry Windsor-Smith put on him in the Weapon X storyline in Marvel Comics Presents. Having said that, it looks way cooler when Windsor-Smith drew it (which is true of most things) than it does on Hugh Jackman’s head.
H.P.: disagree very much on Lee Pace, as I thought he did a great job with Ronan. The part was incredibly poorly written, but that’s not Pace’s fault, and I thought he did the best he could with the material. But we’ll get to that in February….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@22 Magneto getting his family murdered and going crazy is actually faithful to the comics. There was a brief time period where Magneto’s wife being murdered was the main explanation of why he felt Mutants could rule over Humans better, as well as explaining why Quicksilver and the Scarlett Witch were gypsys.
As to the movie, the biggest problem with it is the fact that Apocalypse isn’t Apocalypse from the comics but is in fact Ra from Stargate. Ra transfers from body to body, Ra also is pretty rubbish in terms of having powers (if he had any) just like Sesame Street Apocalypse and his power of Learning (is this the movie where Hollywood finally realise that sand does not an interesting subject make?) while both get blown up in a big fireball/nuclear explosion at the end. All hail The X-Men/Stargate crossover.
As to the Wolverine cameo/sidestep/whatever the hell that was (I prefer to call it the X-Men go on a day trip) my problem with it is that it’s taking something that is basically torture with a side order of a bloody massacre and making it 3 teenagers let loose some guy who proceeds to go on a rampage that we really don’t see because like, blood and stuff. However considering that this is actually faithful to the comic story and not the mess of Origins I guess it’s the best version we are going to get of this story.
Is anyone actually looking forward to the next movie though? I’m not particularly hopeful about it.
Oh yeah, I always thought they managed to stay so young looking because Masque of the Morlocks has set up a Cosmetic surgery office in LA and is racking in the bucks. Professor X of course totally changed Masque’s personality so Masque isn’t disfiguring people anymore (after that one time with Whiplash). It’s my theory anyways and I will fight you with sand over it.
LEARNING!
IIRC, the reason Barry Windsor-Smith drew all those boxy pieces of equipment around Wolverine’s waist in the “Weapon X” storyline was so they could get away with having Logan be naked the whole time, with the boxes or their strategically cast shadows blocking certain things from view. The movie put pants on him, though, so there was less reason to recreate the look.
I never even bothered watching this one but did I read that right, a single arrow accidentally killed two people?
@29 heh, good point, X-men & Stargate crossover. Maybe for the next film they should try an X-men & Thunderbirds crossover.
ChocolateRob: the two people killed by the arrow were embracing each other, and given the short range involved, it’s completely plausible. This movie had lots of problems, but that wasn’t one of them. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
The whole trip to Alkali Lake added nothing.
We got the worst of both worlds with how they portrayed Apocalypse. They didn’t go all the way making him an imposing giant oozing menace but they went so heavy with the latex that they didn’t get the advantage of a real actor either.
Very disappointing after the last two movies. This one felt written by an algorithm.
@33 The trip to Alkali Lake allowed them to actually do Weapon X (pg13 version) so it did add something. It’s just not adding much is all.
Yeah, this one was just kind of a mess. And the destruction at the end felt a little too over-the-top — sure, they weren’t SHOWING any dead folks, but the body count must’ve been pretty significant nonetheless.
So basically, from the X movies, at least, the Wolverine “trilogy” is the only one where the third installment is actually pretty good. I’ll be VERY curious to see what happens when we get a third Deadpool movie …
@35,
Third Deadpool we get Wolverine. Ryan Reynolds will wear Jackman down.
@36. ragnarr: Unless they cast Keanu Reeves as the new Wolverine…
“Apocalypse, that was excruciating. I didn’t know when I said yes that that was what was going to be happening. That I was going to be encased in glue, latex and a 40-pound suit—that I had to wear a cooling mechanism at all times. I couldn’t move my head, ever.“
Apocalypse riding in a saddle to the cooling tent
That’s Oscar Isaacs describing part of his miserable experience making this movie. Check the link for more.
One thing I looked forward to was Olivia Munn’s Psylocke. I was a fan from her time on G4, where she mostly did stupid, humiliating things for the enjoyment of nerds in arrested development… hey, waitaminnit… never mind.
This movie failed my “coherent storyline” requirements pretty much from the start, with the all-powerful En Sabah Nur somehow walking into the giant death trap his minions have secretly built for him. Then we have the heap of coincidences tied to En Sabah Nur getting released, causing a chain of events that ends with Magneto being angry enough to want to destroy civilization. Finally we’re treated to extensive scenes of Magneto actually destroying civilization, which you’d think might be a higher priority to respond to than reassembling Xavier’s mansion.
Blame Man of Steel, I think. You’ll remember that after that movie there was a huge uprising online, people complaining about the wanton death and destruction of Metropolis, and that Clark didn’t try to take the fight elsewhere. This is one of the reasons I believe the airport scene in Civil War ended up as it did. An abandoned airport in Germany? Really? But nobody could complain that innocent people died that way.
I think this movie did the same thing. Abandoned locations, desolate or sparsely inhabited areas… I think they wanted to avoid a backlash.
@39/danielmclark: Well, to be fair, the Civil War sequence was good guys vs. good guys, so they would never have chosen to fight each other if there had been civilians present. That makes sense in any case. But other MCU movies have had battles in populated areas where the heroes focused heavily on protecting and evacuating civilians, e.g. the first two Avengers films’ climaxes. The problem with Man of Steel‘s climax (well, one of its many problems) wasn’t that it had a fight in a populated area, it was that it virtually ignored the human presence and reduced it to empty CGI spectacle with no consequences. (One of the very few non-awful things about Batman v Superman was that it tried to patch over that omission by using those hitherto-ignored consequences as the story catalyst.)
Not a superhero movie, but that was one of my complaints about San Andreas — when they were wandering through the ruins of recently tsunami-stricken San Francisco and they weren’t having to kind of thread their way through floating corpses.
@39
Tempelhof: The mother of all ‘abandoned’ airports
:-)
Oh, by the way, I should clarify that the airport in Civil War wasn’t “abandoned,” it was evacuated on Tony Stark’s orders once he learned that Cap and the other fugitives would be there. The evacuation is an explicit plot point; it’s the evacuation sirens that alert Cap and his team that they’ve been found and need to suit up for action.
All I really remember from this movie are the Quicksilver scene and the Phoenix scene, which stands out for me only because it was visually appealing at the theater, but then, they nerfed the entire Phoenix saga, again. I will not be watching the Dark Phoenix movie, it’s not earned, there was no story behind her and the Phoenix force or anything. I honestly can’t understand why Marvel is letting the film even come out. It will do damage to the X brand for sure.
Quoth DougL: “I honestly can’t understand why Marvel is letting the film even come out.”
That’s not really how licensing works, or how filmmaking works. There’s an agreement going back to the previous century between the 20th Century Fox Film Corporation and what was then called the Marvel Entertainment Group giving the former the rights to do live-action adaptations of X-Men comics. While none of us knows the particulars of that deal, it’s pretty damn certain that Marvel doesn’t have any kind of veto power over the movies, especially since a) this deal was made at a time when Marvel wasn’t exactly a major player in Hollywood and b) they didn’t use this hypothetical veto power to kill The Last Stand or X-Men Origins: Wolverine, so it seems unlikely that they’d now use it on Dark Phoenix.
Besides, that deal has yielded eleven movies and a couple of TV shows, all of which (even the crappy ones) have made flipping great wodges of cash for both Fox and Marvel.
Given all that, the notion of Marvel not “letting” the film come out is completely unlikely.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@44
Well if it does good then they make a huge pile of cash (and that is the yardstick which Hollywood measures success by, not artistic merit: c.f. Michael Bay filmography) and if it does badly and sinks the current X-line up then it makes it easier to reboot them and slot them into the Disney-MCU later, because the press will give them free publicity by talking about a reboot and will inevitably talk about how whatever they did revives the X-line up in a brave new direction. Froma producer’s stand point there is no downside.
Remember the producer is not your friend, their priorities do not necessarily include audience enjoyment as an essential marker for success.
BTW, FYI, En Sabah Nur not an ancient Egypt and name. Not even close.
@47/roxana: You’re right. In fact, “En Sabah Nur” is Arabic (and Turkish) for “The Morning Light.” It’s a pretty major historical error, considering that Arabic wasn’t spoken in Egypt until more than 3500 years after Apocalypse’s birth.
@45. I think the subtext of 44 is “given the Disney buyout of Fox”. I’ve not been following closely enough to know if they even could stop the film’s release at this point in the buyout process, but I think that’s the idea in question.
This has been sort of mentioned by earlier commenters, but part of what spoils this movie for me is the casting. I just can’t buy Sophie Turner as Jean Grey, nor Olivia Munn as Psylocke.
Turner is just completely colorless. I always thought that on Game of Thrones it was supposed to show her initial withdrawal from harsh reality into fantasy, and later on as an emotional severance as protection once she met Littlefinger, but now I realize it is just Turner’s acting style and it really turns me off.
And for Munn, I found her charming on Attack of the Show, but she has never acted in a movie role that I liked. Add to that the fact that she seems to be doing cosmetic surgery that makes her look less Asian and I dislike her as Psylocke. Of course, I always hated that the body switch ended up permanent anyways with little apparent psychic damage to Braddock.
Isn’t Psylocke Japanese as well. I just looked up Olivia Munn and apparently her mom is Vietnamese
God, they really couldn’t find any Japanese actresses huh? Sigh….
It’s surprisingly rare these days for Japanese characters in North American productions to be played by actors of Japanese descent rather than other Asian ethnicities. The Legendary MonsterVerse is a notable exception.
It’s odd, because there used to be quite a lot of Japanese-American actors in TV — Mako, George Takei, Robert Ito, James Shigeta, Sab Shimono, etc.
Anyway, Psylocke’s ethnicity in the comics is a complicated question, since she’s an originally white English character who got permanently body-swapped with a Japanese character.
@50. vinsentient: Attack of the Show… GAAAHH… That smarmy, insufferable Pereira guy. I’ll never forgive him and his stupid boss for killing Tech TV.
As far as Munn changing her appearance, don’t think that’s true. Only her mom’s of Asian descent. Her dad’s of European descent.
At the end of Days of Future Past, we had that post-credits scene which sets up Apocalypse building what I believe to be the Lazarus Chamber in ancient Egypt. And all you could hear was the fervorous chanting of his name. Those few seconds had me instantly hooked. Coming off of a superb film like DOFP, it was all one could hope for.
Needless to say, I had expectations for Apocalypse. The way that post-credits scene was staged, I was expecting this film to take a very different direction, one that would focus heavily on religious themes, possibly a segment of mutant society that would take refuge in following Apocalypse.
Imagine the possibilities: Homo Superior, people with powers that set them apart from mankind, and who have been persecuted their entire lives for being different. Suddenly, this superior being comes forth and helps them find new meaning in their lives. Imagine just how much of a challenge it would be for the X-Men. Having to face a godlike being that innocent people are willing to kill in order to protect. I could even picture Apocalypse dividing the X-Men.
Instead, we got this.
Not that it’s a bad film. It’s just a hopelessly generic one, with the team facing off a boring supervillain with no nuance (he literally does next to nothing, leaving all of the grunt work for the Horsemen). This contrasts with the lively art direction. No X-Men film has been this colorful, especially compared to the original entries.
I think Sophie Turner is a decent actress…. as Sansa Stark. As Jean Grey, not so much. She plays the character as too confident, which goes against the whole concept of someone afraid of unleashing their full powers. They could have easily gone with Haley Ramm.
Another problem this film has is an excess of characters and side plots. It’s a similar problem to Last Stand, of all things. I didn’t even remember Caliban was in this film until I saw Logan the following year, which prompted me to look up Wikipedia.
If there’s one aspect of this film that really works for me, it’s the Wolverine “cameo”. It has an energy and urgency the rest of the film lacks. Jackman steals the whole sequence, and it’s the one part where Jean works as a character, when she establishes her rapport with Logan.
The film has plenty of good parts that don’t get followthrough. Overall, I like where the story takes Mystique and Xavier, but I do feel Magneto’s own arc gets cut off at its prime. Once he loses his family and destroys Auschwitz with his powers, he goes to standby mode for the remainder of the story, similar to what happened to Jean on X3’s middle act. That Erik would settle down and start a family feels very organic and ultimately tragic. It’s too bad more isn’t done with it*.
*One beef with the daughter, however. As established by Jean in X1, mutants don’t develop powers until their adolescence, usually caused by moments of deep stress. Erik’s daughter didn’t look a day over 8. At least X3 had a 12/13 year old Jean.
Overall, a flawed film with wasted potential, but some good moments. I’m eager to see how Kinberg will tackle the Dark Phoenix story this time. He’s lucky he has the chance to do the same story he once adapted yet again.
Eduardo: while mutant powers generally manifest at puberty, that’s not 100% true. Some powers manifest earlier.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Echoing everyone else’s sentiments that Pox Lips was WAY too tiny. He looked like he was drowning in that suit (which Oscar Isaacs confirmed) I did enjoy 1) Nightcrawler 2) Mohawk Storm and 3) bonding scenes with the teenagers. Particularly the latter, because the day to day life of the X-Men were some of my favorite moments in the comics. I also appreciate the casting of a biracial woman for Psylocke, it manages to nod at both Betsy’s origins and her mind switch with Kwannon, even if the actual writing for her was lackluster.
I also think Magneto is a great character, but going from lovable family man, to wanton destruction followed by such a quick reconciliation is too much. Best friend or not, Xavier knows Eric probably killed millions of people worldwide and would do so again. Fry his brain and Hank will help hide the body.
Maybe I missed comments, but was anyone else uncomfortable with the prolonged scene between Jean and Logan? There’s some history on his part (even if he doesn’t remember) but she’s a teenager meeting him for the first time and the scene felt too charged. Like, why is she so awed by this shirtless psycho she just saw murder a ton of people? It feels inappropriate, especially for Singer, who still hasn’t faced consequences for his own misconduct with teenagers.
Ophid: There’s no history there yet. Remember, this takes place in 1983, seventeen years prior to their next meeting in X-Men (assuming history follows the same track as far as Logan first hooking up with the X-Men). And remember, she’s a telepath, so she can see precisely what tortures he’s been put through by Stryker.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Unfortunately I don’t have time at the moment to read everyone’s comments, so I apologize if I’m just echoing sentiments already expressed:
I agree that this movie was sadly pretty weak in a lot of ways, but I thought the scene of Quicksilver rescuing everyone from the exploding X-Mansion was way better than the “Time in a Bottle” scene from Days of Future Past.
I don’t have a problem with the characters not looking older between movies, because I assume the movies aren’t meant to literally be taking place decades apart any more than an X-Men comic today is meant to take place 50 years after Uncanny X-Men #1. Comic-book time in movie form, you might say. ;)
–Andy
I know consensus is how much this movie sucks, but it’s a movie I still have a lot of fun watching. I got a kick out of the 80s aesthetic, and I really enjoyed watching the young mutants. I love Quicksilver’s scene. And the part where Professor X subverts Apolocalypse’s message to the mutants about using your strength to protect those that have none is one of my favorite scenes. I liked the idea that Jean had learned to accept the ‘Phoenix’ inside her, although it looks like Dark Phoenix is going to undo that so…
I can’t stand the whole poor Erik and his man pain/let’s fridge his wife and child plot though. How many times do we have to forgive Magneto? And regardless of ‘abandoned locations’ I always assumed there was a pretty implicit death toll.
I can’t disagree with you on Apoclalypse being a rather bland villain. Or on Sophie Turner’s performance! I don’t love her in Game of Thrones, and I don’t love her here – she always seems rather…vacant to me. I had the initial thought as 50 – that it was in some ways part of her character’s trauma. But no, I think that’s just actually her acting style.
The Wolverine cameo raises similar questions as I had at the end of Days of Future Past. If the Stryker that found him was actually Mystique…how did he end up here??? I don’t even know anymore. And regarding them having ‘history’ – but wouldn’t that also be the same Wolverine who went back in time, so theoretically, he would have met Jean already, although he likely wouldn’t have recognized her.
@59/Lisamarie: No, the time-traveling Logan went back to the altered future and saw that the X-Men (even Jean and Scott) were alive again, the last screen appearances of the original movie cast. So the Logan captured by Stryker (or whoever) must’ve been the one native to that time. Remember, it was only Logan’s mind that time-traveled, that ended up Quantum Leap-style inside his younger body. That mind returned to the future at the end.
Thank you! I completely forgot it was just his mind. I was mis-remembering the last scene as some kind of time skip after he had re-lived throgh history. I’m never good with time travel stories, honestly.