Review: X-Men: Apocalypse

I’ve never called out someone else’s review in one of my reviews before. It’s tacky and pointless, but when you’re the only quote on the movie box, and you’ve dubbed this movie, “One of the coolest superhero movies of the decade”; I have to wonder what fucking movie you watched. To quickly sum up what you can expect from this film: everything Bryan Singer has ever done in an X-Men movie. The buildup is the same, the pacing the same. The really bad attempts at comedy… sadly still there.

Here’s how it goes: He builds up the threat of the villain. He also uses this moment to explain why Apocalypse hasn’t been around. He’s been buried, and no sunlight has hit him. After the villain moment, we check in with our main characters that have all been scattered. Magneto has a family, Mystique is saving mutants, Charles is running a big ass school. Apocalypse is woken up by Moria who returns in this film; she lets the sun in and this finishes whatever stupid excuse of a transfer Apocalypse was doing.

Let’s pause and talk about his powers. He can transfer his mind to other bodies. In that body, he then takes that power and all powers transfer with him. Some real bullshit. Of the powers he has, healing factor, some shit with sand and either turning off or turning up a mutant’s powers. Though don’t focus on the “turning off” part because that only happens once and then he forgets he can do it. Wait, wait… at the end he makes fire. If it’s convenient to the story, he can do it.

We do another round of “who’s that character” as we meet the new/young versions of the old X-Men characters. Apparently, Cyclops is a risk taking dickhead now.

Magneto’s family gets killed because he saves a human’s life, this makes him go a bit crazy, and the world starts looking for him again. Interestingly enough, the even from Days of Future Past is brought up, but not show. I say that because Singer uses clips from First Class more than a couple of times towards the end.

Apocalypse lives, he finds Storm. She gets to talk for one of her two scenes. They somehow find Caliban who is nothing like the comic character. He’s also in a completely different country, but Storm knows about him somehow. They pick up Psylocke, who gets one of her two speaking appearances as well and head off to find Angel. Etc, etc., they get Magneto.

Stuff happens. Xavier is kidnapped. The main characters are all kidnapped, and we watch a long helicopter scene showing them going into Canada to connect the old X-Men movies and the Wolverine movies. Blah, blah, X-Men save Xavier and we tease the Phoenix yet again.

It should be pointed out that Magneto more than likely kills hundreds of thousands, if not more, of innocent people around the globe simultaneously. No one bats an eye and Xavier welcomes him with open arms. There’s even a news blurb saying he helped defeat the bad guy… even though the bad guy was just trying to get mind powers while Magneto destroyed the planet. The thing that annoys me is that since First Class everyone has had a hard-on for Fassbender and so now we have to try and redeem Magneto rather than just have him be a fucking villain. It’s sadly the same in the comics. Yes, he’s a cool character, but that doesn’t mean he gets to be protected when he does evil shit.

Aside from the fact that there’s no consequences to the film's actions, my biggest problem was all the terribly fitting dialogue that tied into removed scenes. “I want to go to the Mall.” And then we see them coming out of a movie theater having watched Return of the Jedi and making a meta-joke about how the third one always sucks. Way to make sure that happened Singer.

Slow clap for Bryan Singer.

There’s a ton of examples throughout the movie, but I’m just going to tell you one and co-credit this part to Patrick Larose as well since he was thinking the same thing. At the end, Storm walks up to Quicksilver and says, “So he’s your dad? You gonna tell him?” and when there’s a pause of “how did you fucking know that?” she adds, “Mystique told me.”

What?

No, seriously what?

WHAT?

Why would anyone share such deep and personal information to someone they were fighting two fucking minutes ago!?! They shared a plane ride together, and now Storm is just like, “Hey fast dude, is that your dad? What do you think about all the people he killed? My friends included, even though we never saw them again, but they were ground zero when he made a big fucking pyramid.”

There’s no heart to this film. Xavier gives Moria her memories back, and she doesn’t slap him. If someone takes your fucking memories, you fucking slap them when you get them back because that is some evil fucked up shit.

That brings me to why Singer references First Class so much in this film. He piggybacks on a lot of the groundwork done in that film, and it’s all the emotion moments because he doesn’t know how to make those as a writer or director. There’s no heartfelt moments here. You don’t pity or feel for any of the characters. Even when the other mutants are calling Jean Grey a freak, you don’t care because he squashes it with dialogue from Cyclops about him feeling sorry for himself. Even Quicksilver debating about telling Magneto he’s his father is completely drained of emotion because Singer can’t bring out an emotion performance for Evans.

This film is in love with its destruction. It’s in love with the improved computer graphics. It’s in love with the big name stars attached to it. The problem is, it’s forgotten how to tell a compelling story and with all the other superhero movies out there, it’s not exactly breaking in new stars either. It’s unfortunately just a formula film from a director that was never that great at the formula and has taken sixteen years too perfect. Meanwhile, we’ve all moved on. No one wants to see your slightly better than X-Men movie, because, like that film, the graphics weren’t the problem.

Before I close out, I want to mention the special features which included a PSA about smoking. That is exactly as it sounds, not something related to the X-Men in the least bit. The gag reel wasn't funny. It was people having fun at work, but not funny. It's 8 minutes long and you can probably watch it on YouTube so just do that. As for the rest of the "X-tras" (get it?), they are worthless as all other home release extras so don't bother.

I only watched this because it was given to me for review. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have watched it. I wish I hadn’t. I wish I had turned it down because it didn’t even look like the X-Men up on the screen to me. It was just big name actors and bad cosplay with a lot of computer graphics laid out to look like a movie. It’s not, though. It’s just a series of events happening. It’s a franchise that’s more interested in teasing elements of one of Marvel’s deepest wells; then it is actually telling the stories that make that well worth going to. Hopefully, this shit will get another reboot, but if Singer is attached in any way, shape or form, I won’t even bother.

Not only is this not one of the coolest superhero movies of the decade, but it's also hands down the worst superhero movie I’ve seen since X-Men Days of Future Past.

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X-Men: Apocalypse Director (if you can call it directing): Bryan Singer Writers: Simon Kinberg, Bryan Singer, Michael Dougherty, Dan Harris Studio: Fox Run Time: 144 min

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Review: Brooklyn Nine-Nine S4 E.01 “Coral Palms – Part-1”

I only have one friend that watches this show which is a damn shame. It is one of the funniest shows on TV and the only other comedy besides Modern Family that makes me laugh like a raving idiot. To put it plainly, I loved this episode. I also worry about its writing constantly. To explain that I will tell you that this episode picks up six months after the end of last season which is something they’ve done each season. I appreciate that because it gives a real sense of time passing. People can look different due to other roles they’re working in the “Biz,” and it’s fine because time in their world has passed.

Jake and Holt are in Florida, and if you hate Florida, you’re in for a treat because they rip the hell out of the state. I too hate Florida, and so I loved every cruel joke at its expense. Therein lies the problem with this episode, though, it’s all Jake and Holt. Over the course of three, now four, seasons the actors have developed an incredible chemistry with each other. The jokes, even when expected, are hilarious because of their delivery. Good comedy starts with good writing but ends with better delivery (you could also argue that it doesn’t always need the writing).

The gist of the episode is that Jake is working the Figgis case while Holt is working at a mini-golf place. Holt discovers what Jake is doing and takes his files which forces Jake to take a job alongside him to make Holt’s life hell. They end up being recorded by a woman I can only describe as perfect TV white trash, and they have to convince her not to upload the video or reveal their location to Figgis.

Let’s ignore the convenient writing in that the woman didn’t have enough data left on her plan in order to instantly upload the video. And the fact that no one else caught it or uploaded it as well. All that aside it was a funny episode because it succeeded in showing how miserable these two life-long cops are without their jobs and for setting the stage for them to be thrown back into action.

Again, though, the problem is that it relies on Jake and Holt to carry the entire episode which they do and do easily. Making me wonder how the show will feel when the rest of the cast comes back. My biggest problem with last season is that it resolved the cliffhanger from the previous season within a few episodes. Then it hung out until the winter break and came back with the Figgis storyline. While this episode was quite funny, the majority of the third season was not. Which leads me to wonder if the cast is too big and the stories are being spread too thin.

I know that this review is more of a question about the series and where it’s heading and not so much about the episode. I think I pretty clearly summed up my feelings on the episode in the beginning. And yeah, it’s not the “correct” way to review, but I’m writing this from a place of a viewer that watches shows with a critical mind and wonders about these things. I don’t want to drop this show, but I’m not going to sit through another season like the last. This episode alone had more memorable jokes than anything I can remember about last season. It’ll be quite a while before I forget Holt talking about boobs being desirable because they were heavier or that he wasn’t able to delete the video on the phone because it’s not the same as his phone. There’s some Archer quotability to this episode and series, but it needs to be this strong every episode, not just at the beginning and end.

Score: 4/5

Brooklyn Nine-Nine S4 E.01 “Coral Palms – Part-1”