Xmen: Apocalypse has taught me a valuable lesson about the X-men – these movies will always make money. Though the sixth installment of the X-franchise has yielded some pretty shabby reviews (critic review score of 49% on rotten tomatoes), Apocalypse excels in touching upon alot of points that the other films have lacked. But to really understand what we never knew we wanted, it’s pretty much requisite to look inside ourselves as a movie-goer and ask what you want to see in an X-Men movie. The short answer is team dynamic. It really begins and ends with this simple idea. So far the new timeline of X-movies have led to alot of anticipation of a fully-fledged team, and in Apocalypse were told the wait is NEARLY over. Though there is no offical X-men, team leader, team, or anything remotely resembling the 90s cartoon, there is enough in there to pay the rent and star gaze, dreaming for a better tomorrow. Doing an apocalypse story is increasingly difficult when considering the balance of a popcorn movie and a film. Generally speaking Oscar Issac kills it with some pretty haunting voice work, and a power level fitting of the
X-Universe. Though he is in no way a relatable villian (a metric to which a good film is reasonably judged), he is given some cache as that is the backbone of the character – and truely played by Issac. Also its important not to get it twisted- Apocalypse is in a total time flux. Only this time the temporal bind is a movie with some great pacing and bad editing. Though the movie moves along in good sequences, the scenes themselves are drawn out and in some cases useless. One that comes to mind is a minute long sequence of Jean Grey and Apocalypse walking in slow motion toward each other – and ends very non-triumpthantly.
The character progression is really good. Cyclops, Jean Grey and Nightcrawler get a chance to set up a solid X-team, with the senior staff getting the lion’s share of the screen. It always bothered me that Mystique was so central, but it seems like they remedyed this a bit better, by cutting that with more McAvoy. People and critics alike will be too soon to write this off, but I’ll give you some talking points to refresh your pals with:
1. Beast’s fur makeup is the best we’ve seen it so far. They even went as far as bulking him up. His design in the previous 2 installments I felt were eclipsed by Kelsey Grammar.
2. Wolverine was beautifully used and spared no punches when it came to using the claws.
3. This one had a real First Class feal to it.
4. Though the post credits scene was a real snoozer, the final scene was pretty much what I’ve been waiting to see since the year 2000 in an Xmen movie. Its kind of funny that this teaser/setup scene is Bryan Singer basically telling us he knows what fans want. But he’d rather bog us down with ‘Flight Suits’ and tales of an old team called the ‘X-Men’, opposed to simply sacking up and giving us the movie we’ve wanted all along.
By:Mike Caparowich
