X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

Wrote this for my school newspaper but they never published it, which is kinda sad, because people DO care about X-Men.

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

Jiaqi Kang

O, money, money, money, money –– marvelous money,

Thou art the most powerful thing in the universe to ever exist.

Thou enticeth all of Hollywood like naïve bees by honey,

And maketh them add more Wolverine movies to the waiting list.

X-Men: Apocalypse is the latest installment of the rebooted X-Men series that began with the (really great) prequel X-Men: First Class in 2011 and passed by 2014’s (extremely taxing, but okay because it had Fan Bingbing and Peter Dinklage) X-Men: Days of Future Past before it placed this third film into audiences’ apathetic laps. As the title suggests, this film envisions a potential End Of The World As We Know It, and the valiant mutants of Charles Xavier’s School of Gifted Youngsters or whatever it’s called must battle the greatest, oldest mutant of all: En Sabah Nur, played by everyone’s dream boyfriend Oscar Isaac, who unfortunately is covered in thick blue face-paint for the entirety of the movie (should’ve taken him to the swimming pool on the first date).

En Sabah Nur awakes from a five-thousand-year slumber in the busy Cairo streets only to find out, through a quick and convenient, and totally not cliché, montage of archive footage, that the world is now terrible and corrupt, because war and bad things. He decides that he needs to destroy the world with more war and bad things, but he can’t do it without exactly four (4) disciples so he seeks out the four most powerful mutants in the world, apparently, to join him. Unable to resist the allure of getting to wear black leather and to look really cool and sexy while standing on windy mountaintops, they immediately agree. Out with War, Famine, Death, and Pestilence –– that is so last millennium. The new Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are Macklemore with Wings, Sad Dad, Dominatrix?, and Storm (who is super cool and cute). In true ‘anime final battle’ fashion, a coalition of iconic mutants from the first trilogy (whose actors have now all been replaced by younger, more bankable ones) are able to defeat him through the power of teamwork and love, and James McAvoy becomes bald, which is an unappetising sight. Oh, and Wolverine appears for a scene, and then runs away into the wild so he can collect his check and get ready for his next film in a couple of years. In Chinese, we call that da jiangyou –– knocking on your door in the middle of the night wearing nothing but a bathrobe in order to borrow some soy sauce for an unspecified reason and then disappearing after having shown one’s ruggedly handsome face and muscular body for a few minutes.

Even forgetting the fact that this is almost the same movie as the original trilogy, and much too similar to Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) except that Quicksilver is better in this one, X-Men: Apocalypse is simply sad. It’s a rushed, heavy film full of tired tropes and with an uninteresting, sometimes bafflingly mundane plot. I am convinced that all of pre-production took about 103 minutes to complete. There’s a lot of wailing, pathetic melodrama on the part of Magneto, whose actor, Michael Fassbender, seems not to have gotten over his central role as Macbeth in the 2015 film Macbeth, based on William Shakespeare’s play “Macbeth”. (He should ask Scott Summers for advice –– after all, that guy got over his brother’s death after approximately 0.38 seconds since it wasn’t relevant to the plot that followed.) There’s a lot of unnecessary slow motion being used in swooping, majestic gestures that we’ve seen way too much of recently in blockbusters. There are a lot of eyedrops being used on set to generate that single tear flowing down the left cheek, which represents the sense of helplessness and loss that so dramatically afflicts the protagonists. The “X” barrier made of random pieces of metal that Magneto creates to protect his friends is so hilariously lame that it borders parody. So are most of Magneto’s lines, actually. (“No matter what you do, you can’t prevent me from killing these men!”) The intended comic relief of Nightcrawler awaking in the aftermath (“Vat did I miss?”) and the ensuing exhausted laughter is so forced that it gives you severe second-hand embarrassment.

And Jubilee, who at first was allowed to hang out with the other main characters, is suddenly left behind just when things get exciting. I wonder why she didn’t receive that opportunity. Is it because of her race? (She isn’t fast enough to win against Quicksilver.) Or the shape of her eyes? (They can’t shoot lasers like Cyclops’.) Or her skin tone? (It’s not blue and impressive like Mystique’s, Beast’s, and Nightcrawler’s.) Oh, wait, I get it. It’s because of her yellow… jacket, which is clearly not fashionable enough compared to Jean Grey’s outfit. Dammit, Jubilee! This is all your own fault.

And yet, it was not a terrible movie, either. In fact, it was far from it. Redeeming qualities –– surely, all films must have them –– include Professor X’s initial awkwardness with Agent MacTaggart, the significantly reduced annoyingness of Jennifer Lawrence, Nightcrawler’s emo haircut, and the enormous amount of effort that the visual and sound effects team put into making such elaborate yet generic sequences. The film sure beats many of the other things showing in cinemas currently. And it’s not a bad movie. It just isn’t good. It’s a stepping stone, used to introduce important new characters and resolve past issues. Over time, it will be glossed over in the way that it deserves, because the sole purpose of its creation is to act as a bridge between the cleanly-wiped slate from Days of Future Past and the real, actual films that will follow in the next few years, which will probably be much better.

So let us wait with patience for the stories that will be told in the future. Hopefully, they will allow us to forget the sight of Oscar Isaac’s gorgeous, angelic face being smothered by moist, sticky makeup, and the speed of Professor X’s wheelchair, which is so slow that it causes physical pain to watch. In the meantime, let us congratulate all of those who contributed in making the film, especially screenwriter Simon Kinberg. If you stay quiet for a while and cock your ear to the west, you may hear them burning money and cackling maniacally, and I am genuinely happy for them and their unbelievable luck.

5/10

P.S. I would also like to give a shoutout to La Praille cinema’s inconvenient toilets, which force you to activate the dormant escalator to go downstairs and, when you’re done, don’t allow you to come back inside (because obviously everyone who pees has already finished their film) unless you rebelliously bypass the (unstaffed) ticket checking counter to return back upstairs via another escalator. Just build a second set of toilets on the second floor, please. I’m sure Bryan Singer can give you some of the cash in which he is rolling at this very moment.