X-Men: Apocalypse

[Donomark]

Every time I see her in promotional material I never give a shit. Latest trailer even ends with her being choked out like "OH NOEZ!!!" like she's actually in danger of dying.

[dc20willsave]

So, I guess Wolverine is in it?

Edited April 25, 2016 by dc20willsave

[JackFetch]

I think Apocalypse should have a deeper voice. Other than that I'm ok with it.

[Dread]

That moment where Apocalypse grabs Xavier and then grows is right up there with the Flash cameo in BvS as the most comic book thing I've ever seen on screen. I'm excited for this. 

I thought for a second: "what if that's not Wolverine as we know him?" then I looked and saw Jackman is listen in imdb. BUT I also saw something else. I stumbled onto Caliban in the list of characters and saw who was playing him. I don' know if there's ever been a more dead-on match for actor to character?

[JackFetch]

People are all upset about it being centered around Jennifer Lawrence. What did you expect to happen? She's a fucking A list superstar. She's probably the main reason these keep getting made.

[Koete]

They probably keep making more because it's a successful brand and superhero movies are making a ton of money right now, but, while I no longer think she's heaven sent, I don't have a problem with her either. 

[Donomark]

I've complained about her on this thread before, but even more now it's like she trained the main X-Men team. Like the continuity's been jacked for a long while but it still bothers me that such an uninteresting and inconsistent character has gotten this much focus.

I don't hate J-Law or anything outside the X-Movies, but it's a legitimate annoyance.

[JackFetch]

Oh I can't stand her self–righteous attitude anymore, but I understand how Hollywood works. She had one notable role when First Class came out. Now she's the highest paid woman in Hollywood. Of course they are going to change whatever they have to so she gets the most screen time. Movies that made as much money as First Class don't always get sequels(it didn't even make it's budget back in the USA), but when you have the hottest star in the world in a multi picture deal you are going to use her.

[Dan]

Fox lifted the review embargo early. No one knows why they would do this, because the reviews are rolling in, and they are scathing.

[JackFetch]

Wow. That is brutal for Fox after coming off of the critical success of Deadpool. It's time to reboot the whole thing and start over.

[Donomark]

TBH the trailers routinely did nothing for me. I think the general consensus is that it's not terrible, just not very great. I'm sure to find some enjoyment out of it, but I'm not shocked to hear it's fairly bleh.

[Missy]

The review on Forbes mentions Scott and Jean, after seeing Return of the Jedi, note that the third movie in a series is always the worst. While, yes, I get the meta joke about X-Men: The Last Stand and this, too, being a third movie in a new series, it bothers me because even though it's an alternate / fictional reality, how many movies had a third part by 1983?

• 1964: Goldfinger
• 1966: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (if you consider them sequels and not spiritual successors)
• 1982: Rocky III and Friday the 13th Part III
• 1983: Jaws 3-D (released after Jedi, however)

What am I missing?

And, again, I know I'm overthinking this, but it's jokes like this in period pieces that yank me out of movies.

[Donomark]

Yeah, that joke has only been around to my knowledge around the internet age of the 2000s. They wouldn't be saying that in the early 80s.

[Davedevil]

I still think they should have handed the reins to the franchise over to Matthew Vaughn. 

[Professor]

Went and watched this today.  And it was not very good.  Maybe that is a bit harsh, as I did enjoy parts, but I felt overall a bit bored. 

- Apocalypse.  The powers are undefined and not consistent.  He has the power to turn people into sand (I think that is what he does.  Point being he kills groups of people in seconds.).  Yet X-People come a-calling and he forgot.  He also forgot he had the power of teleportation.  At least I think he does.  It might have been Psylocke, because they only teleport when together.  Oh, and the powering up.  He powers up the first three horsemen and gets to Magneto and forgets?

- The action.  There wasn't that much.  Which would be okay to me, if the big fight was kickass.  It was not.

- The fucking phoenix.  I guess Jean cannot be an interesting character without it.  Or something.  And holy hell, Xavier had to tell Jean 'help me' for what felt like five minutes straight.

- Too many characters with not much to do.  Take Psylocke.  She is a woman with a sword and a purple glowing power thing.  This movie tells me nothing. 

- The Wolverine.  Movie just kinda stops so Wolvie can murder-kill people.  That said,  live action Weapon X gear Logan did make me geek out a little.

- Caliban.  Dude was cool.
 

 

Edited May 29, 2016 by Professor

[dc20willsave]

Non-spoilery thoughts: I enjoyed it.

Spoilery thoughts:

It's not the best X-Men film. It's also definitely not the worse. It's probably around the same level as First Class or the original. It does suffer from trying to introduce too many characters. Like Prof said above, many of the new characters tend to be rather ill-defined. Psylocke is the big one. She also got the short end of the stick when Apocalypse was boosting everyone's powers because he literally just made her sword more purple and gave her a swimsuit to run around in. Angel also for that matter. He gets just a tad more but then croaks having done little to nothing.

Really, this is like two different movies at times. On one hand, it's about the New Class having fun together. While it takes awhile for her to get there, I really liked Sophie Turner as Jean. Yeah, she doesn't get a ton to do and takes forever to actually do anything at the end but she's good enough. Scott and Nightcrawler were also fun. I wish we had had more with Jubilee but ehh, what you gonna do?

On the other hand, you had the X-Men movie which hits some good beats (Michael Fassbender has some wonderful character moments early on) but also falls flat at times (the entire sequence in the Weapon X facility.)  This is the part I cared less about. You can only save the world so many ways before it feels ho hum. Also, Apocalypse totally murdered all of Cairo and disarmed the entire world of nuclear weapons so that's something.

BTW, the Wolverine cameo was just as jarring as you'd expect and totally felt out of place and served no purpose except that they had to fit him in somehow.

Then, Jennifer Lawrence. We all know I love J Law. They had a good enough reason for her to spend less time in the make-up this movie (She's running from the persona of Mystique since it's become seen as a symbol for Mutants all over the world) and she does put in her best performance of the series but, despite the ending having her set-up as the drill instructor for the next generation, I would not be unhappy if she gets written out before the next movie.

Finally, the continuity crap. This actually fits if you think about it too long. The main problematic areas can be explained away with everything from Days of Future Past changing the timeline radically. Thus, Magneto went off and disappeared to have a family, people searched for Apocalypse, Nightcrawler got introduced to the X-Men early, Storm was found by a villain, the Professor wasn't a raging dick about Jean's powers. Other things, they might take a slight bit more. This Angel isn't Warren Worthington but someone else with the same powers. This Jubilee might be the mother of the one who shows up in the background of the other. All in all, I really didn't care if the continuity doesn't line up completely anymore. I had fun.

Edited to add: The after-credit sequence it alright. It's mostly setting up Mr. Sinister for a future movie but, more than that, it's setting up X-23 which FUCK YES!

Edited June 2, 2016 by dc20willsave

[Professor]

What did you think of Apocalypse?  Because a fair amount of my problems with the film center around him.

The after-credit sequence.  I think it kinda missed the mark as everyone in my theater had no idea what that was a teaser for.