Awww.. you beat me on the Monster Magnet reference... fun band. I never watched Deadpool, as the previews were so horrendous, but that I don't really like comedy that's not British... I hated Guardians of the Galaxy, too (what I saw of it.. I actually shut it off about 1/2 way through)

Deadpool begins so great, but, like many a superhero film before, including the first X-Men film, ends so badly. At some point, they just decide it's time for the action climax, and all irony seems to disappear. It becomes the film it was supposed to be mocking. It's not funny. It's not a good action scene. It's not anything. It's just Deadpool fighting some dude to rescue his girlfriend, and then they kiss.

So frustrating. Because it had been a near perfect film until it was time for that last action scene.

As to the general discussion, Wolverine definitely returned to 2023. Touches like his little hologram radio were supposed to indicate this was the future, and a better future than the one we left.

And he does indeed wake up one day, and remember everything, just as we saw. For the previous 50 years, he knew only the new timeline.

I think it makes as much sense as anything. His mind, with memories of the old timeline, returned to his body at the time he left it. They said explicitly in the beginning of the film that is what would happen.

I have the same complaint about The Wolverine.

It goes beyond Fox, though. I felt the same about Spider-Man, Batman Begins, Iron Man...

Trick questions, eh?

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)



Directed by Bryan Singer
Produced by Simon Kinberg, Bryan Singer, Hutch Parker. and Lauren Shuler Donner
Screenplay bySimon Kinberg
Story by Bryan Singer, Simon Kinberg, Michael Dougherty, and Dan Harris
Box office $543.9 million


The film that attempts to heal the rift.

A Quick Crash-Course: As I've discussed extensively in this thread, the X-Men film franchise had a dilemma post-2006. X-Men: The Last Stand, while financially successful, had been a critical flop that was nearly universally panned. After exploring a series of one-shot films set in the X-universe that avoided returning to the now-problematic main film storyline, 2011's X-Men: First Class, though a sleeper at the box office, gave the franchise a new way forward. Set fifty years in the past, it gave us the opportunity for new X-Men stories while also circumventing the now-paused present day film continuity. 2014's X-Men: Days of Future Past then attempted to use time travel both to undo much of X-Men: Last Stand and to clearly establish this new First Class film continuity as the future of the X-Men film franchise.

With me so far?

Coming off of all that, Apocalypse is where Singer and Kinberg finally have to put their money where their mouths are and thoroughly convince us that James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, and a host of newer casting choices ARE the characters we saw in those first two films (only now Mystique isn't evil). Putting aside, for a moment, everything else great and terrible about this film, I feel they succeeded in this most important of goals with flying colors. While McAvoy's shaved head and blue suit might be the least subtle sign that the new will connect neatly with the old:


Not exactly Patrick Stewart, but close enough, and actually closer in feel to the comic

there are plenty of more subtle connections as well, from seeing Eric help to rebuild the house, affirming his old assertion from the original X-Men film that he helped to build (the version of) Cerebro (seen in that film), returning to that futuristic blue basement level from the first three films, and having Xavier provide a monologue to open up the film, followed by an image of the rotating Cerebro "eye"



-- it all connects us back to the beginning of this franchise and gives a sense of completeness, even when things don't 100% align. In fact, so long as you're willing to write off Last Stand all together (which Singer certainly is -- he had nothing to do with that film), just about every little anomaly between this film and the original franchise can be explained away by Logan altering the time stream in Days of Future Past. Well, except for Stryker's accent going away. I still can't explain that one.

But even more important than bridging continuity between the old franchise and the new, this film finally paves a clear way forward for the series. Instead of trying to figure out how to continue the present day X continuity, the direction for the franchise suggested by this film is to stay in the past, moving through decades to write fun period pieces that feature a younger X-Men team first introduced here. And really, the only characters kept off the table with that approach are Wolverine and Rogue (who first join the team in 2000). Even then, you could have Xavier seek Logan out earlier on since he knows about him from Days of Future Past.

So continuity is fixed, and the franchise is fixed. And, while $543.9 million is a significantly smaller box office than either Days of Future Past or Deadpool pulled in, it's still an excellent return on the $178 million investment. This franchise may not be holding a candle to Marvel in terms of commercial success, but, after a decade of uncertainty, it does leave the X-Men film franchise with a future.



In terms of writing, there are fewer plot holes than in First Class (though that isn't saying much), but the dialogue is outright embarrassing in places.



I'm sorry. That's just...bad.

And, going bigger, this film fell victim to the same trap that so often separates the bad X-Men films from the good ones -- too many characters; not enough characterization. Explain to me why Storm, Psylocke, or Angel decided to join Apocalypse? Come to think if it, tell me one thing about any of those characters other than their occupation prior to meeting Apocalypse. Storm looks up to Mystique, but rather than that in any way helping to define her ethics, beliefs, and character, it's just a necessary bit of information planted in order to justify her turning on Apocalypse at the close. Otherwise, she was totally cool with flying in the face of the ideals Mystique supposedly espoused.

Who is Cyclops? The character is just as underdeveloped as he was in the first franchise. Even losing his brother doesn't help us care for the character any further.

What is Jean's connection to Xavier? They repeatedly play up a bond between the two in the final act, but we never actually saw any sign of it existing. Xavier creeps into her room while she's sleeping (that's not awkward) and then gives her some bogus reassurance about her dreams in order to shut her up that proves to be utterly wrong. Where do we see him actually serving as a mentor and support anywhere in this film? She cares so much about what happens to him, but we're just supposed to assume it's because he's an awesome teacher. No such evidence exists within the film.

Why bring Moira MacTaggart back into this film only to have her stand on the sidelines, useless the entire time. Nothing is done with her character at all beyond giving Xavier some hope for rekindling a relationship.

The film conveniently gives Eric a wife and daughter who exist just long enough to provide him with a motive for turning bad again. I don't feel like we had a chance to actually care about these characters in any way. They were just tokens, existing to further a plot.

And Eric is conveniently reformed in the end, and we're just going to pretend he didn't commit mass murder and devastate civilization on a scale never before seen in the history of mankind. "Apocalypse made me do it" or some such crap.

Quicksilver says Magneto is his dad and is afraid to tell him. That's a plot point; not a character.

Jubilee is still somehow the student in the background sixteen years earlier (Okay, maybe that part doesn't reconcile well with the first two films)

Even McAvoy's Xavier, who positively owned it in the last two X films, has no character here at all. He hurts Apocalypse by offering to show him his pain, but I honestly had to stop and ask myself "what pain?" because it really doesn't get addressed at all in this installment.

I have no opinion on Sophie Turner as Jean Grey. For most of the film, she delivers her lines like she's half asleep. I think this might be intended to show how much of herself she's holding back, perhaps its an effort to recreate that creepy girl we all knew in the halls of our high school, or maybe just to show that she doesn't get much sleep at night due to those intense nightmares that upset the whole school, but (whatever her reason) it bores me and doesn't allow her to portray any range in her character. The directing makes her amazing in that final act, but I don't think any of that is attributable to choices she is making as an actor. The real question will be what she opts to do with the character in the next film now that she has awakened something in herself.

Really, the only character in this entire film who truly begins to feel like a character to me is Kodi Smit-McPhee's Nightcrawler. Though that character is played entirely for laughs, Smit-McPhee at least gives him an energy that feels reminiscent of the comic book version. I'm truly excited to watch that character transition from self-conscious odd-man-out to a character confident enough to whip out a fencing foil and channel Errol Flynn. Alan Cummings did a great job with Nightcrawler previously, but Smit-McPhee authentically channels aspects of the character I read on the comic book page.

Most importantly, three films into this new continuity, there's still no real "team" in these X-Men films. There's no synergy among the members, just an assembled cast of characters. This deleted scene was the film's sole effort to address this:



but, cute as it is, it doesn't really succeed in making these characters come together. Scott and Jean clearly like each other, but Jubilee and Nightcrawler are still friendly strangers along for the ride.



Look, there's a lot wrong with this film, and I haven't even tried to explain why Apocalypse's plan made no damn sense (but I could!). Nevertheless, the film accomplished the most important goals of all: connecting the new franchise to the old franchise and pointing a way forward for the film series.


Continuity issues:

Let's run a comprehensive check here.

X-Men: Yup, Eric helped build Cerebro. Yup, the Mansion and Cerebro look the same. Nope, Xavier and Mystique still seem to have no particular interest in each other in the original film. Nope. Xavier and Magneto did not meet at the age of 17, as the first film states.

X2: What we see of the Weapon X program in Apocalypse looks very different than the flashbacks we saw in X2. That can work though, as Stryker was clearly affected by the changes to the time stream in Days of Future Past, and that could easily express itself in how he structures the Weapon X program.

X-Men: The Last Stand: Forget it. There's so much here that doesn't work, from Jean being about twelve years old in 1986, to Boliver Trask being black, to Angel being twenty years younger and totally different, to Xavier putting up psychic barriers in Jean's head without her knowing it, to Moira MacTaggart being significantly younger and a scientist. This one is clearly out of continuity and has been since First Class.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine: Basically, everything we see after Vietnam could have been changed by Days of Future Past. Wade Wilson aside, everything in this film that doesn't jibe with current film franchise continuity can be explained away.

The Wolverine: The film does a lot of aligning with The Last Stand, but not in a way that prevents it from working here. If we accept that Jean Grey died in the old timeline without accepting Last Stand as a whole, this film still works.

Deadpool: Contradicts the Wade Wilson in X-men Origins: Wolverine but doesn't contradict anything in the new X-Men films. Mandates that Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead will be members of the X-Men when we get to 2016, but I wouldn't be too surprised if that gets ignored down the line.

Really the only significant continuity issue is with X-Men: First Class, believe it or not. This film, taking place twenty years later, has most of the characters from that film looking approximately the same age. Xavier jokes that MacTaggart looks like she hasn't aged a day, and McAvoy and Fassbender carry that weight of the world look that could help them pass for being in their forties, but Alex Summers, his teenage younger brother, and his young looking parents definitely left me scratching my head.


All in all, there are minor continuity issues with the other films, but continuity as a whole is looking pretty good so long as you get rid of Last Stand (which is fine with pretty much everyone) and assume the Summers family uses a lot of Oil of Olay.



Adaptation issues:

At this point, the films are slaves more to their own continuity than to the comics. It's weird to see Mystique training the first official team of X-Men, or to have Beast, Cyclops, and Jean standing side by side and suddenly realize that Beast is supposed to be more than twice their age. It's funny -- I suspect part of the reason Days of Future Past worked so hard to merge the new X-men films with the old ones was that First Class had been a box office disappointment. If the producers had the gift of foresight, they would have seen that Days of Future Past would go on to outperform all previous X-Men films, drawing in a ton of new viewers who'd never seen the original films. I wonder if the franchise would still be slavishly clinging to the 2000 and 2003 films if they'd known that they didn't need to in order to draw a big audience. But they irrevocably connected the timelines in DoFP, and there's no going back from that.

Beyond that, I found a lot of disappointment in how characters were adapted here. Archangel and Psylocke, in particular, were fan favorites folks had been waiting ages to see on the screen, and they really didn't do much with them, even killing off Archangel before he could get a single moment of characterization in. Apocalypse was sort of meh. I loved the look of his solar-powered pyramid technology, but the character itself didn't have enough presence. In contrast, I loved seeing Storm as a thief (and rocking that mowhawk) but I was also disappointed they wrote out any chance of her being worshipped as a god (my favorite part of her backstory). And Caliban -- I love how they handled Caliban.


Other:

Love how carefully they set up Logan (2017) here, not just with the Weapon X sample being obtained by a shady company (the Essex Corporation here, but Alkali Transigen has it in Logan), but I also like how Caliban feels like the same character in both films, even though he's performed by two different actors. You see him at his height in Apocalypse and then after the fall in Logan, but so much of the character feels the same.

Quicksilver's solo scene in Days of Future Past was one of my favorite parts of the film. While his follow-up solo scene in Apocalypse is nearly as fun, it's also utterly ridiculous:



So, assuming Quicksilver truly can move faster than gravity, does that really enable him to fling massive tables through windows, throw people into sheets with perfect accuracy and not hurt them, and do full 360 degree backflips in midair while carrying people?

This may be the first film in the franchise where I actually enjoy the climactic battle. It's also one of the first climactic battles in this franchise to not emphasize a notable setting over the battle itself. Maybe someone finally explained to Shuler Donner (or whoever kept insisting on locales like The Statue of Liberty, The Golden Gate Bridge, Three Mile Island, the Bay of Pigs, a baseball stadium, etc etc) that these things weren't working.




Grade: B+ It succeeded where it needed to and failed where it could afford to.

Do we really want this franchise to go on? Like the X-Men comic itself, it became entangled in retcons a long time ago and so loses any interest as a continuing saga.

Naturally, Fox won't let go of the franchise as long as it makes money... but after your great review of the entire series, shaxper, I realize that of the whole lot there are very few X-Men films that I actually enjoyed. "Oh, neat, there is Such-and-such" is pretty much the most enthusiasm I managed to manifest.

As you point out in reviewing Apocalypse, characterization is sorely lacking in many of these movies. And without characters to care for, what is there to be interested in? I'll take Logan's very human dilemma over Apocalypse's CGI destruction porn any day.