I wasn't going to write about this movie but I'm surprised to see a lot of "It wasn't THAT bad" opinions going on. May I present, a dissenting opinion.
IT WAS GREAT!
Ha, just kidding, this movie sucks.
I really liked X-Men: Days of Future Past for two reasons. It mixed the old cast with the new in a "this is not entirely fan service" kind of way, and it retconned the godawful X3: The Last Stand. (Christ even the title of that movie is shit). It was also an enjoyable all around movie with solid themes, good acting....etc. But yeah, it fucked up the continuity of the X-Men movies so badly that it's starting to rival its own source material.
Now X-Men: Apocalypse comes along, decides to fuck with the continuity even more, and just lose all sense of what made previous X-Men movies good. Hell, the X-Men movies have been better at villains than Marvel's total control of the MCU, so it had that going for it too.
Apocalypse is a villain I've wanted to see in a "Marvel" movie mostly because I think Marvel villains have been terrible so far. (Along with Thanos and Venom.....What? What are you talking about? Venom has not been featured in a Spider-Man movie yet. I THINK I would have remembered that). I mean, Whiplash? Yuck. Red Skull? Nazi. Loki? Daddy issues. Ultron? Stupid. Fuckin Baron Zemo? He's in Civil War.....I guess. The Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies? They all personally know Peter Parker and are defeated by their own hubris. Even Venom......SHIT.
Apocalypse in X-Men: Apocalypse desperately needed a monologue. For reals. Yeah he has one while launching all the nukes into space but it's just "I'm evil bow before me mere mortals for I am the one true god blah blah blah." He always had a....genocidal tone in the comics and was pro eugenics and.....yeah okay. Can't really go there without an R rating but you know what I mean. This was diet Apocalypse.
Captain Grumpy Pants.
Also, his ability to grow into kaiju size only happened in his mind fight with Xavier. Lame.
I have more issues with the rest of the characters. It was obvious Jennifer Lawrence wanted nothing to do with this. She was not going to put on that blue make-up for more than 3 scenes tops. The dialogue had to point this out and Mystique's reasons for not being blue were "I'm hiding"....."despite also being the Mutant and Proud person that a lot of people look up too and saved a president and mutants are more accepted in this time why am I doing this?" It's dumb as shit and flies in the face of her character. There is no reason for Mystique to be here other than, it happens to be Jennifer Lawrence. Apocalypse should have disintegrated her.
The new-ish characters are fine. I liked Sansa Stark as Jean Grey. Cyclopes kid was fine (I don't care enough to look up his name). But....why did the movie spend so much time establishing these characters when we already know who they are? It was a ton of wasted time and I find it funny that the basics where explained, but Jean Grey's Dark Phoenix bullshit is glossed over????? What the fuck? That was cheap, cheap, cheap. I don't even care if that is a spoiler. Fuck that noise.
Miss Grumpy Pants.
This movie commits a cardinal sin in being boring. Nothing happens for an extremely long time so that new characters, who are also old characters, can get backstory. New characters who are not old characters, like Psylocke, gets maybe three lines of dialogue and....thanks for stopping by I guess. Also, she's the only one who is still evil in the end in case fuck it. I don't care. Angel, who is sorta old but that movie got retconned, is a douche and MIA at the end. Storm is fine and oddly enough, I LIKE this characterization of her. Funny how we get a cool Storm character now that Halle Berry has nothing to do with her. I'd watch that spinoff.
The two big ones, Xavier and Magneto, are fine. James McAvoy is my favorite as I don't think he's ever been in a bad role (Yeah I liked Wanted fucking fight me). Micheal Fassbender can do almost no wrong, that one wrong being Prometheus which fuck that movie while I have a chance to say so. Xavier is basically the Professor X we all know and love finally.....which has the downside of making him boring. Yes he rekindles his love with Moira but come on.....
APOCALYPSE DOESN'T HAVE HIS POWER AND THAT'S WHY HE WANTS TO SWITCH INTO HIS BODY YET XAVIER LOSES IN THE MIND FIGHT?!?!? Did everybody miss this? The mind battle is in Apocalypse's head, I think, even though it shows the school and Jean Grey jumps in. Xavier gets his ass kicked because, apocalypse is better at everything, but in the universe this CANNOT HAPPEN. It's the reason Magneto wears a helmet. Xavier should have been able to jump into Apocalypse's head and immediately put him into a coma. How can Apocalypse fight Xavier in his own head, or if it is actually in Xaviers head, IF HE DOESN'T HAVE THE SAME POWER GODDAMNIT this is stupid. Literally every other mutant and human has no control over Xaviers god like powers.*
*There is a distance thing hence Cerebro and the airport scene in Days of Future Past, but Xavier is close enough to the battlefield one would think. Actually, he's in the Blackbird....which is doing what during that final fight?
Magneto is okay but weird. Did anybody really see him trying to live a quiet life in Poland after Days of Future Past? Yeah. No. Also, Apocalypse bringing him to Auschwitz was a little on the nose. Plus....what exactly was he doing during that final fight? Ripping up the earth from Cairo to...destroy Cairo only? Or was this Man of Steel like terraforming the entire Earth which by how long it was taking, would have taken years. I assume he was building Apocalypse's base in which to launch his wars but....this is dumb. And in that final, FINAL fight when he betrays Apocalypse, why is he still throwing earth at him instead of dropping a building on him? You know, like the baseball stadium he picked up IN THE LAST MOVIE.
First Lieutenant Grumpy Pants.
This movie is a mess. It's boring. Nothing makes narrative sense. The movie makes a big deal out of Xavier going bald (wha????????). Cerebro is AGAIN used against the X-Men. Jean Grey doesn't try to murder everybody when going full Phoenix. Nightcrawler is on the team when nobody knows who he is in X2. There is a Wolverine cameo......I ALMOST FORGOT.
That whole Stryker detour is there only to justify a Wolverine cameo and it's bullshit. Why is this scene in the movie? It has nothing to do with Apocalypse, it REALLY fucks up the continuity even more, it should have been cut for a shorter less boring movie, and even the actors seemed to be spinning their wheels. The writing in the Weapon X scene is fucking garbage. Nobody can use their powers on the helicopter because of a MacGuffin and NOBODY sees the stowaways just hanging out in the back? Get, the, fuck, out, movie. Jean Grey can't hide them there. She can't! ITS IN THE MOVIES OWN RULES I AM NOT NITPICKING. And when they do get to the base, still nobody finds them until they have already tried to open the cell door. (There isn't a camera pointed at THAT door? Really?). Also, that base is in Canada. How did they get home? Also, also, at the end of Days of Future Past, it's shown that Mystique is impersonating Styker WHY? Fuckin.....what.....why? That went no where. No, fucking, where!!!!!!!!!
This makes me "General Grumpy Pants".
This movie isn't quite as bad as X3: The Last Stand but it tries. It really tries. A for effort. It's funny that Days of Future Past would bring so much hope to a franchise that really only wanted to fix that one movie and do nothing else. Why even tease Apocalypse if you're not going to give a shit about it?* Bryan Singer made X-Men good, left it, X-men got shitty until the very underrated First Class, then Singer came back, made one good movie, then made it shit again. This franchise needs an extended break. Maybe then, somebody can make a fucking X-Men movie with Gambit in it.
*Here is a nitpick. Why did the movie completely abandon the Age of Apocalypse storyline from the comics? I know they didn't want to use more time travel, even though the comics treat time travel like a drunk starting a knife throwing circus act with his wife, but why not? If the movies wanted to stay grounded, which they did a very poor job of in this movie, while also not giving a shit about continuity, what's the point? Why not go all out? Make a movie that is nothing but alternate timeline shit. I'm not saying this would make a good movie, but there is potential for a better one.
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3 Footnotes:
1. The Quicksilver scenes were cool. I'm not entirely sure how he found out Magneto was his dad but that is the least of my complaints.
2. I could sum up this movie in one sentence. "Jubilee has a cameo and doesn't even shoot any fucking fireworks". It's perfect. She's in the movie for Jubilee fans, all two of them, then doesn't even get to show her power.
3. X-Men movies ranked, including spinoffs.
Deadpool (I'm counting it).
X2: X-Men United (dumb name)
X-Men: First Class.
X-Men
X-Men: Days of Future Past
The Wolverine
big drop.
Wolverine: Origiiiiii.....hmmmm, wait.
X-Men: Apocalypse
Wolverine: Origins (forgot how bad this was)
That time I shit my pants and it looked like Magneto's helmet.
X3: The Last Stand.
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