X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

[Gman2887]

^Agreed. Of the comic book showdowns happening this year, X-Men is the one I'm most looking forward to.

[Benjamin Haines]

This spoilery new trailer gives away a lot of dramatic beats/revelations, including...
Check it out if you're interested but I kind of wish I had just waited another month to see the whole movie. It still looks like it'll be great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jer8XjMrUB4

[Gman2887]

Can. Not. Wait.

[Dai]

I'm looking forward to this, but I'm concerned to see that the run time is 165 minutes. Pacing has always been one of the strengths of X-Men movies, and I don't want to seen that thrown out the window out of some misguided need to take a kitchen sink approach to ending a kinda-sorta-trilogy.

[Gman2887]

I read it was 147 minutes. Typical of most movies these days I suppose.

[mr.negativity]

The actress reveals why she turned down Ryan Reynolds‘ record-setting anti-hero tale

[Dr Kain]

First reviews have come in and I can't say I am the least bit surprised. The trailers sceam X3 to me.

[jellydonut25]

[klen7]

Most of the reviews are saying it's more of the same plot points that have been done to death in almost every single X movie so far. Also seeing a number of comparisons to Last Stand.

[mr.negativity]

SPOILERS

AICN:

APOCALYPSE has something in common with Superman in QUEST FOR PEACE. And I loved that.

Forbes:

It's A Franchise-Killing Disaster

[klen7]

That Forbes review is brutal!

[mr.negativity]

[jellydonut25]

I liked this a lot. Haters be damned. We live in a world where everything has to be either the best thing ever or the worst.


This movie is gonna wind up getting forgotten or bashed in favor of Civil War, but I personally liked this better.

[DannyBeane]

While imo this was the weakest of the X-men retcon trilogy, it was still a totally kick ass film. It's worth seeing just for Quicksilver, Nightcrawler, and the mandated "Totally Not a Surprise but Still a Surprise Cameo Because He's in Every Xmen Film" surprise appearance. It's a fun film that just happens to have a weak ending.

[mr.negativity]

[Rodanex]

This was easily the worst X-Men movie since X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

[mr.negativity]

This story spoils elements of X-Men: Apocalypse.
For those who haven't seen the movie, stop reading right now.

[Dai]

X-Men: Apocalypse was pretty good. Not the best in the franchise, but definitely not the worst. The villain wasn't terribly interesting, but my only real complaint is the ridiculously contrived event that pulls Magneto back to the dark side. Quicksilver steals the show again; the Sweet Dreams scene was glorious.

Seconding Jelly's distaste for how polarised opinions are becoming for movies, and media in general. This year, in particular, it seems like every week a trailer on Youtube is setting records for either most likes or dislikes, and movies that are plain decent are being elevated or trashed in public opinion virtually on a coin toss. The Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare/Battlefield 1 situation strikes me as the current pinnacle of this; here you have two near-identical franchises that present unambitious (but generally solid) iterations, year after year, and yet this year one is being trashed and the other treated like the second coming, and all the the pettiest and most contradictory of reasons.

[Henry88]

$141,823,662
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=x-men2016.htm

[jellydonut25]

[Dr Kain]

Man, what a terrible night for a bad movie. For a movie that was titled after the character Apocaylpse I was expecting to see said character. Instead, we got some lackluster Ivan Ooze-looking wannabe that never even felt like Apocalypse once in the entire movie. He was weak and pathetic. Now if you were a fan of Not-Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, you should have no proble liking Not-Apocalypse. Hell, he is never even called that once. The rest of the movie itself was mediocre as well. Sansa Stark was terrible because I never saw Jean, I saw a little spoiled brat I wanted to smack some sense into. Also, I see why they picked someone like Olivia Munn for Psylocke as they didn't need anyone to act just to groan. Then we have Mystique, who gets very frustrating. Her and a group of mutants are trapped in a room that nullifies their powers EXCEPT hers. She was still able to transform back into Jennifer Lawrence despite this. WTF? Also, there was no character development at all for Archangel and Storm, making them still completely pointless to the movie universe(s). The best things include Magneto and a really awesome sequence with Quick-Silver. As a whole, this movie was mess and was just slightly better than X3. Unless you need to see this in theaters, rent it. It gets a 6/10.

[Rodanex]

I really enjoyed the last two X-Men films, but this one was kind of a mess.

There are some pretty big narrative flaws (the movie takes an abrupt left turn halfway through, whisking the characters off to a subplot that has literally nothing to do with the rest of the story), and there's a lot of little plot holes that really start to add up. Nightcrawler conveniently forgets how his powers work, allowing some humans to trap him inside an electrified cage. Mystique is somehow able to remain in J. Law-mode even though she's in a room that supposedly nullifies mutant powers. Speaking of Mystique, remember how she disguised herself as Stryker in the last movie so she could prevent Logan from being taken by the government? Yeah, they don't follow up on that at all. In fact, they completely contradict that ending. I don't really understand why Apocalypse wakes up when he does, they just show some guys chanting and praying in this underground cave, and then he awakens. I'm not clear on why this cult wasn't able to awaken Apocalypse 1000 years ago, or 100 years ago, or a few days ago. Also, why the hell is Moira McTaggert investigating this cult to begin with? I won't spoil the ending, but it's a giant deus ex machina.

All logic flaws aside, I think the main problem with this film is that it fails to really be about anything more than a bunch of superheroes punching a villain to death. X-Men First Class has the subtext of learning to be proud of who you are, Days of Future Past has Xavier learning that he can't control Raven and he has to let her make her own decisions. I feel like the best comic book movies find ways to have depth beyond superbeings fighting, and this one....doesn't.

A lot of people are making a huge deal out of the Quicksilver scene, and I really don't get the hype. It was neat in the last movie, here it just seems repetitive. Are we going to have to do this every single time Quicksilver appears in an X-Men movie? Also, it happens right after something that should be sad and tragic and very abruptly turns it into essentially a comic-relief bit.

Almost as a counterpoint to Civil War's expert handling of many different characters, this film fails miserably. Psylocke and Angel come across as one-dimensional thugs. (Also, wouldn't Angel be an infant in 1983? He was in his late teens/early 20s in The Last Stand) Storm is probably the best developed of the Horsemen. Magneto is just kind of there, going through familiar character beats again...Fassbender is a great actor, but he really doesn't have much to work with here.

It's not all bad...I though the casting was great. Just about all of the new actors do a great job (with the exception of Olivia Munn and Ben Hardy, mostly because they have nothing to work with). I didn't really mind the look of Apocalypse, even if he looks a bit like a super sentai villain. I actually think the beginning of the movie is pretty good, it was neat seeing some characterization and back story for Scott Summers, even if it's a little too reminiscent of Wolverine coming to the X-Mansion for the first time.

I don't mean to sound like I'm nitpicking...I really wanted to like this movie, but I just couldn't do it. It's not the worst thing ever, but it's just kind of stupid entertainment without anything deeper beneath it.

[Dai]

[Gman2887]

Dug it. Weakest of the new movies, but that's not too bad considering First Class and Days of Future Past are absurdly high bars to hit. (Both of which I find better than the grand majority of Marvel Studio flicks.)

Most of my complaints are nitpicks, but considering everything they wanted to juggle I was actually fairly impressed with how well it worked. In many ways it did more for the characters than the first X-Men, which is still remembered rather fondly. I'll admit Civil War may be a better movie, but I enjoyed this one more. It seemed less worried about the pretentiousness of being an overly serious masterpiece (like Batman v. Superman wanted to be) or painfully trying to convince the world it was the most fun, witty action flick of the year (Civil War). It was an entertaining action flick with beloved characters and a few slip-ups.

No disaster here. Just low flying panic attacks from critics.

[jellydonut25]

Kain is literally the ONLY person I've seen say they messed up Apocalypse. If you ask me (and nobody did...) they absolutely NAILED Apocalypse. He's my favorite X villain and not only did I think he looked great (the I an Ooze comparison is utterly ridiculous) they absolutely captured his personality as the ultimate Darwinian and worshipper of STRENGTH. His voice was perfect and...weak? He is mentally strong enough to psychically "OH GODZILLA! WHAT TERRIBLE LANGUAGE!" slap Xavier and can't be physically harmed . In what way is he weak?

I feel like you made up your mind to hate this iteration of Apocalypse if you thought he didn't act like Apocalypse.