I’ve seen 4 Super Hero movies this year, though Deadpool
sort of falls into its own category, the other 3 all have the mega
conglomeration effect of doom where there’s a shitload of characters and it’s
impossible to service all of them simultaneously. Batman Vs Superman had the
fewest and somehow still managed to be the worst of the bunch, Captain America
and X-Men both have an insane number and battle it out for the “not quite as
good as Deadpool” throne. The thing with Captain America films previously is
that they only had a small number of characters in them which allowed for a
much different, enjoyable experience, but the new Cap is basically just
Avengers 2.5, except Chris Evans is in almost every scene this time. Apocalypse
has always been a super over the top megavillain so it makes some amount of
sense that X-Men would try to have as many characters as humanly possible in
there; additionally X-Men just works as a setting for massive numbers of
characters to begin with.
So, the question is which film handles the burden better,
and the answer is quite easy for me; in X-Men there are quite a few strong
character moments for at least half a dozen different characters in the film,
maybe more like 8-9; in Captain America there’s only like 3 or 4 even though
there’s like 5 times as many characters than that in the film, so while the
individual performance of Robert Downey Jr. might be the second best thing in
either film (second to the mighty Fassbender, naturally) it doesn’t really make
that much of a difference in the long run because there’s just a shitload of dead weight along with
him. That’s not to say X-Men doesn’t have its share of weak characters either,
but the situations that they’re placed in at least work a little better and it
doesn’t feel wholly manufactured. Hell X-Men actually has a fucking villain in
it instead of some jackass that runs around behind the scenes because people
didn’t like Age of Ultron that much.
Alright so enough of the comparison talk (mostly compensating
for absent previous reviews), let’s dig a little deeper into X-Men: Apocalypse
itself. The best moments work extremely
well, Magneto’s brief family life, another fucking amazing Quicksilver music
montage, Wolverine straight murdering a bunch of people; but there is a fair
amount of cheesiness to be had as well. Apocalypse is a really great villain
for a cartoon and a pretty poor one for a film adaptation, that said I think
the movie did a pretty good job of making it work, they even included “Yo this
dude gets BIG!” without it being completely absurd. However there’s a lot of
James McAvoy sweatily saying stuff to himself, and that kind of only works if
Fassbender is involved somehow, since McAvoy is destined to be a pretty good
foil for much better actors, beginning with the Last King of Scotland.
As far as the general cast of characters: Cyclops is played
by the kid from Mud, Mud is the best theatrically released film from 3 years
ago (in the era before Edge of Tomorrow and Mad Max) and a Palme D’or
participant from 4 years ago, kid from Mud is a fantastic actor so good shit
there. His older brother (?) Havoc is okay, I guess he looks like an edgy 80s
cool kid or something? Seemed better than previous performances. Sansa Stark
plays Jean Grey and her accent is even more weird this time, she’s not even in
the same universe of attractiveness as Famke Janssen so needless to say it
doesn’t work very well, apart from being a poor actress (though good for angst
and still better than Daenerys). Nicholas Hoult is no longer Nux, sadness; he’s
still good as Beast though. Angel is a terrible character in everything and he
was vaguely passable in that role here. Nightcrawler seemed to be impersonating
previous era Nightcrawler, whatever. Storm was evil for a while, so that was
new; just gets way out acted by Oscar Isaac in every scene. Psylocke was around
and did action stuffs, good for her. Quicksilver was absolutely great of course
and Jennifer Lawrence was alright. Rose Byrne is in this movie, no fucking clue
why.
Overall I liked this film a fair amount better than Captain
America and it might be the best “Power of Friendship > Super Bad Guy”
Superhero movie since Guardians of the Galaxy. It’s far from perfect but it
does fit in rather well with the rest of the X-Men universe, which thankfully
has always had a somewhat unified vision instead of just an identical template
to work from like the rest of Marvel. Can Josh Brolin outdo Oscar Isaac is the
question of the future, unfortunately I don’t know as much about Thalnos
cartoon/comicwise so it’ll be a tougher performance to judge. I do love me some
Brolin though.
Aside: Hugh Jackman has now been in 8 X-Men Movies, though
he just had a (great) cameo in First Class, outclassing Robert Downey Jr.’s 6
appearances. Supposedly he’s not coming back but that seems to be a common tune
for Super Hero actors. It felt like Christian Bale was Batman for an eternity
but it was just 3 movies, and even the atrocious Tobey Maguire only graced our
presence for a mere 3 as well.
