X-Men: Apocalypse

X-MEN: APOCALYPSE
(2016)
Dir - Bryan Singer
Overall: MEH

For the first time in my almost thirty-five years on this earth and nearly all of them spent as a comic book fan, I am starting to feel the droll of superhero sagas.  Well, cinematic superhero sagas to be specific.  A few short months ago brought us the apocalypticly terrible Batman V Superman and now our last epic of the summer X-Men: Apocalypse is storming up havoc.  I'll stop with the X-Men puns now.  Sorry, my apologies.

Anyway, in between these two blockbusters we got Captain America: Civil War.  In it, so much punching and fighting followed by lots more punching and fighting went down.  Yet the film never catapulted off the rails.  It was a bit more rocky of a ride than we have come to expect from the steadfast and always good Disney/Marvel Studios universe though.  Seriously, lots of characters punching and yelling and then punching some more.  Yet if the "worst" of the co-existing MCU films is either The Incredible Hulk or Iron Man 3 thus far, then this series is doing just fine.

Edward Norton actually turning into Lou Ferrigno clearly would've been preferable.

 

The 20th Century Fox, X-Men film franchise on the other hand now has two duds in its six-film running, not counting the Wolverines.  More on him later.  Unarguably to anyone I know, the first real masterpiece in this series was the prequel X-Men: First Class.  The three that proceeded it had various problems even though they more-or-less paved the way for the entire success that superhero movies in general now seem destined to attain, (Fantastic Fours notwithstanding)  The third, X-Men: The Last Stand in particular pulled off a nifty trick of blowing an interesting enough premise on some of the most distracting deviations from the comic book source material yet done, looking incredibly stupid in the process.  First Class then came around with a far more competent director and let its outstanding new actors really dig into their roles, making James McAvoy's Charles Xavier and especially Michael Fassbender's Erik Lehnsherr two of the very best comic-to-film transitions of all time.

In this guy right here's opinion, X-Men: Days of Future Past not only delivered, but bettered on that sweet First Class promise.  This was in spite of or because of, (depending on who you are asking), the returning of Bryan Singer to the directorial chair.  I was certainly nervous going in.  Singer's first two X-Men films were obviously better than Brett Ratner's Last Stand, but Superman Returns was pretty much a piece of shit and I really did not want him bringing anything we have seen before to my instantly beloved, First Class cast.  Things were finally looking up, so don't fuck with this shit Mr. Singer, I implore ye!

Pictured: Mr. Singer fucking with shit.

Then low and behold, Singer done good.  Real good.  So good in fact that I still may consider Future Past to be the best movie thus far with Marvel superheroes in it.  Yes, The Avengers included.  The way that these prequels were now going back in time and putting mutants into the real world's history, re-writing it, and then in one excellent and logical swoop, erasing pretty much everything that went wrong with the first three movie installments was much bravo.  Then that post-credit scene happened and I saw a dude with blue-grey skin, building pyramids with his outstretched hands, and four guys on horses behind him.  Cue everyone who grew up on these comics all at once going "About goddamn time".  Meaning of course that En Sabah Nur was at long last going show up in a fucking X-men movie.

My faith was restored.  I was in.  McAvoy and Fassbender were sticking around.  Hugh Jackman was not nor seemingly ever will go anywhere.  Once again this movie was going to take place in the past, this time the 80s. the same decade that the Giant-Size X-Men was released and this superhero team got really amazing for the first time in comic book form.  On top of all this, now Apocalypse was here.  Looking good people.

Yet in the few short years between Days of Future Past and X-Men: Apocalypse, the cracks started to widen and they started to widen everywhere where comic book characters were walking and talking in movies with CGI in them.  These movies, (regardless of studio or franchise), were now more blatantly than ever trying to one-up each other.  Each new installment made more money than the last and broke more records.  More characters kept showing up with either new actors replacing them or just more fucking characters period.  More buildings are falling down.  More things are happening in slow motion.  More speeches are being made.  More yelling.  The CGI is more everywhere.  The more everything is more everywhere.  More, more, and goddamn more of everything now more intense than ever before!

"Scream for me Long Beach!!!"

What is happening each and every time here is that these movies keep doing staggering business.  This is obvious enough since nerds like me and you, plus normal people alike keep going to see said movies and we are going to KEEP going to see them, (Fantastic Four notwithstanding).  So the people who are making these films are going keep making them and furthermore, they are going to keep making them exactly like this.  More stuff needs to keep happening.  More destruction.  More turmoil.  More drama.  More apocalypse.

What this means of course is that by the time I got up after seeing this movie having previously seen everything that has been coming steadily before it, there is a feeling of something being very wrong here.  Hopeless as it may look, everything that stems from a great place and keeps retreading the same water eventually bottoms out.  Will that happen to superhero movies?  Probably in my lifetime.  Yet a single movie, (*cough* Batman & Robin), is not going to implode the entire genre. What is probably going to happen though is what always happens thankfully.  Something else will come along that wakes everybody the fuck up and shows us once again what can truly be done remarkably with comic book movie adaptations.

Yyyyyup

At this writing though, everything that everyone is borrowing, (or thinks they are borrowing), from The Dark Knight or even The Avengers is the wrong stuff to take.  Taking your comic book characters seriously does not mean you have to kill them or the people they love realistically.  It does not mean you have to use depressing camera filters when depressing shit is going down.  It also does not mean that you have to invite more people to the pool because everyone is so damn attractive and the CGI coming out of their bodies and exploding all around them looks so cool.  At the end of the day, this is all dressing folks.  What we need is what we as filmgoers always need and always get the most excited about.  We need really good actors acting really good and really good directors directing really good and really good writers writing really good movies.  Such things can still be accomplished with people in silly costumes with silly names who originally came from a medium designed primarily to sell to teenage boys because artwork with musclebound good and bad guys looks cool.

By most stretches, X-Men: Apocalypse is not a shit movie and it is not a not-entertaining movie.  There are some funny and fun moments in here, (Quicksilver once again steeling the show, Logan doing all the cool shit that he does in the comics, etc).  There are some outstanding performances in here, (seriously, Fassbender is unbelievably good).  There is some stuff that looks pretty damn nifty, (Psylocke's ridiculous costume).  Still, are these things enough?  Some people who were burnt out on the comic book movie long ago may say it is not.  Some people do not like comic book movies to begin with, but for the sake of this argument, fuck those people.  A lot of others can laugh at these film's flaws, but still leave satisfied and say that indeed yes, all the superheroy superhero things are enough.  Comic movies do not need to be high art.  They look cool and cool stuff happens in them; ergo, they are fun.

Because the world needs more superheroes that are Rush fans as much as they need more puns on their t-shirts.

There is a part of me that really wants to hold onto this simple belief.  There is a part of me that does not want to sink further and further into a realm where I over-analyze everything I watch and can only get excited about the type of entertainment that re-invents the wheel.   I want to go to the movies and enjoy myself.  I used to be able to do this much easier.  Fuck, I even defended Last Stand when it came out.   Yet I am seeing all these movies as they are released and the more buildings that fall down and the more speeches I hear and the more dramatic and deafening the soundtrack is and the more yelling and the more green screen, computer generated sorcery I keep having my senses pummeled with and it is simply getting very difficult to tell myself that I am having fun.  I am getting pummeled with cool shit, but a pummeling is a pummeling, regardless of how spectacular it looks and sounds.

That is part of it, but the other question to pose is; why shouldn't we want our superhero movies to be, well, better?   We do not have to hate everything we see, tear its every plot element to smithereens, and act insulted when someone we know thought it was just fine.  At the same time though, do we really need to just shut up, eat our popcorn, and be happy that Apocalypse is finally in a movie?

I am kind of leaning towards no.  No, it is not OK for our comic book movies to keep doing this, not endlessly and exclusively at least.  Just like a really good friend of ours who is maybe hitting that crack pipe a few too many times or chews with their mouth open, (I am guilty of one of those), maybe it is our friendly duty to sometimes calmly and non-judgmentally take them to the side and say "You know, you should probably stop that".  Superhero movies, (just like grunge bands doing what Nirvana did because it was cool and made money), probably need to stop for a second and re-evaluate what they can do.  There is a lot of amazing stories to tell with these characters.  There is a lot of amazing things we can still see.  We as viewers then can maybe step up a little more and I dunno, even DEMAND that these movies get better.  Not bigger, not louder, not more CGI-ier; BETTER.  The Dark Knight did it.  We all saw it.  Is it greedy of us to maybe want another game-changer such as that?  I say it is not.  Just like a song that really moves us or a piece of art that we cannot stare at enough, there is a lot MORE good songs out there and a lot MORE good pieces of art we can stare at.  Why can't superhero movies have a lot more good?

Speaking of things we can't stare at enough.

v SPOILERS v

Superhero movies CAN have a lot more good and I am optimistic enough to believe that they will.  Sadly though, Apocalypse has finally shown up in an X-Men movie too late.  Because really, there is most likely no other way to tell this story than the way they did here.  The dude's name is Apocaplyse.  What we see has to be apocalyptic, earth shattering, destructive, etc.  Everyone on earth needs to be on the absolute brink of peril, because it is Apocalypse so of course they do.

Or...do they?  Take a glance at the actual character's comic book biography.  Granted there is plenty of silliness in there that would be ill-advised at best to translate to the big screen, but I dunno, I can see something else.  En Sabah Nur is centuries old, was worshiped as a god, and was the first mutant.  Granted his immortality was mostly achieved by Celestial technology and almost everyone who goes to see these movies would say "who?", but think for a second.  We do not have to get an entire rushed, Celestial origin for this to work on camera.  Alien technology can be alluded too, just like how old he is can be alluded to.  Same goes for how he keeps going into a self-imposed hibernation, only to re-awaken oodles of years later, advance himself, and see what he can get into in that era.  Destruction always follows in his wake, but he does not want to kill EVERYONE and just walk around by himself.  He wants to re-emerge and adapt, pop back up and fuck shit up.  He wants to increase his powers, increase his knowledge, extend his longevity and until he meets the X-Men, he pretty much is just biding his time.

Because who CAN'T choke Jennifer Lawrence in their sleep, really?

You know what is actually kind of stupid though?  That Moria MacTaggert just so happens to lift up a rug that shines sunlight onto Apocalypse's tomb just a couple of steps down from the ground.  You know, not WAY the fuck down underneath impossible to uncover rubble from an entire pyramid.  About eight people are praying to him and for the first time since Ancient Egypt, hey sunlight woke him up and now he is back in the game.  Also he touches a TV, learns everything that has ever happened since he went to sleep, and now he can speak all the languages.

So, when we watch this shit we are supposed to just eat our popcorn and calmly chuckle to ourselves going "Ah, aren't superhero movies so silly?".  Is this the best we can do though?  Really?  The thing that has been so exciting and anticipated about Apocalypse showing up is that he is astronomically powerful and intimidating.  He is the first mutant.  He has almost literally ALL the mutant powers.  Not only is he immortal but he is un-killable and he is almost older than recorded history.  Fuck, a guy like that could be scary as shit if we did not even see him.  He could lurk in the shadows or even telepathically run shit from his tomb, having his horseman do his bidding.  Then the X-Men, Magneto, and Mystique can all come out of hiding and re-unite everyone else foe or friend to track him down and stop him.  Even get non-mutants involved, bridge that gap between homo-sapiens and homo-superiors.  Which is a whole ongoing theme of the X-Men in the first place.  Keeping the big bad off screen most of the time, we could then spend the whole movie going "Holy shit, what is this motherfucker gonna look like when we finally see him?"

Oh...

When we do finally see him, maybe take more of a cue from the comics than just "He's a blue guy with armor" and cast, say a seven foot tall, enormous looking Nigerian actor?  You know, instead of that really handsome guy who was in The Force Awakens.  Yes I know Oscar Isaac is actually a really good actor, but you know who else might be a really good actor?  Lots of goddamn people.  Not to get all "Hollywood is racist", but since well they kind of are, there is no reason on earth not to assume that there are boatloads of African or Mid-Eastern actors that not only would be incredibly good, but would actually LOOK incredibly good as En Sabah Nur.  You know, instead of taking an attractive and good "white-ish" looking actor and putting a bunch of shit on him to make him look bigger and older.  How about a really big, older guy who is also a really good actor?  Then put even more shit on him and make him look even more fucking evil and scary and shit look, its Apocalypse from the comics!

I am just spitballing here but really, ever since the first trailer leaked and I saw what Oscar Issac looked like moving around in his suite and then heard his voice, I felt the sting that something was awry.  Why does he sound like a normal white guy with a voice modulator?  Why isn't he a huge fucking thing?  Why is he the same height as Magneto when Magneto is not even in his costume?  This isn't just the inner ravings of a comic book nerd who does not like how they change stuff in the movies.  A big, tall, mostly hidden, frightening, god-like, anticipated, "first mutant" played by an actor who looked like a beast of a "man" that is thousands of years old and if he even needed to speak, had a voice like James Earl Jones fucking Pete Steele with Ivan Drago's tongue and speaking a language of pure terror and Ancient Egyptian-ese could have been balls-quakingly awesome.

Basically this with a cold.

So besides the villain giving off a vibe that falls a bit flat, everyone else in this movie just kind of gets mushed in there.  As mentioned, First Class and Days of Future past continued the Xavier/Magneto arc over two real-life time periods and each character got so much more room to become something great.  Here, given their comparatively far less screen time, Fassbender and McAvoy excel at what they have but there is also over a dozen other mutants cramming to get their origins or further their arcs in there as well.  It is an uphill battle that is impossible to make as compelling as it was  in the last two movies.

This brings everything once again to the "make everything more and bigger" conundrum.  We not only keep hammering what was really good about Professor X and Magneto's opposite view points into the ground, but because of this we cannot per example have an X Men movie that maybe just spends its entire running time focusing on Jean Grey and Cyclops.  Both of whom are two of the most important and/or powerful mutants in the history of the X-Men, not to mention the most iconic mutant couple in the comics.  We all know how much Hollywood loves them some romance after all.  Nightcrawler is also a really well written character in the books.  So is Hank McCoy.  So is Storm.  Also, why didn't Quicksilver tell Magneto he was his son when he had the more-than-appropriate chance to do so?  Off topic, but seriously, da fuck was that all about?

The point is, there is a lot of really interesting X-Men with arcs that are tailor made for the movies.  The problem is, there is a lot of fucking X-Men.  You know what else there's kind of a lot of now though?  Superhero movies.  Particularly, X-Men movies.  We are six in now folks.  Apocalypse very sadly is late to the party.  We have seen everything go explosion to the point of numbness by now, but these movies do make money.  So now let us scale everything way the fuck back and take a look at all the really good characters and really good actors that we can do some really good stuff with.  There is a lot of really good directors out there who would knock a superhero movie out of the fucking park if given the chance.  Crazy idea, but how about we give everyone of those directors their own pick of their own mutant and have them go to town?  You know, like everyone gets their own stand-alone movie and if it does well, shit, maybe even their own franchise?  They can all still live and mingle with all the other X-Men and interact with each others arcs too.  Now that I think about it, that does in fact sound kind of familiar.

Oh...