Apocalypse: An Exercise in Bloat (a movie review post)

With each new X-Men Universe offering from Fox, I find myself more and more longing for the day when Marvel will refuse to renew the license to Fox and re-make the X-Men in the same style as they've done with the Marvel Universe movies from their own production company (the only recent exception being Deadpool). It seems that big studios cannot wrap their collective heads around the concept of building up the world, first, before deluging it with characters and blowing it up (yes, I'm looking at you, too, Warner Brothers). I mean, seriously, it doesn't have to be world-threatening every time.

This one, in particular, got off to a bad start with me. We open some 5000 years ago in Egypt during a ceremony in which En Sabah Nur, later to be known as Apocalypse, is transferring his consciousness into a new host so that he can take the man's mutant power. The ceremony is being held inside a great pyramid. A pyramid which has been built with a... Look, I'm having trouble even saying this, but it's been built with a self destruct mechanism. One of the great pyramids in Egypt with a, yes, self-destruct device. Seriously.

Then, when it's activated, not only does the pyramid collapse in on itself... The solid stone pyramid collapses in on itself. What? Anyway... Once it had done that, it proceeds to collapse right on down into the ground, becoming completely submerged and blocking it from the sun.

There is none of that that makes any actual sense. Sure, you go right ahead and try to win yourself a No Prize by coming up with an explanation that works, but there is none of it that will actually make any rational sense, especially the part where the pyramid is swallowed by the earth.

We're less than 10 minutes into the movie at that point (okay, maybe 15), and I'm already struggling.

The next major issue with the movie is characters. There are too many and too many of them with no introduction. There's been demand since the X-Movies started for everyone's favorite character, whomever that may be, but Fox has gotten into the habit of just tossing them in without bothering to tell the audience who they are, basically relying on audience knowledge. This is fine under two conditions:
1. The character takes no part in the story, as with Jubilee in Apocalypse. Or any of the background students at Xavier's school.
2. The audience is only made up of fans of the comics who already know all of the background information they need to have.
It's alienating to non-comics fans when there are a bunch of characters running around without any information provided as to whom they are.

That's one of the things Marvel Studios has done exceedingly well, especially since many of their movies have dealt with little-known characters outside of the world of comics fans and conventions, is to introduce characters in a plausible and meaningful way. Even with Spider-Man, probably the character with the least information given about him within the context of a movie, in Captain America: Civil War, there was an appropriate amount of background given to give the character context for the movie.

Fox failed to do that with pretty much every character they brought into Apocalypse, including characters who have previously been in X-Men movies. The introductions of Nightcrawler and Angel were flimsy at best. Storm, given the fact that they've never really revealed any of her background prior, was hardly better. And Caliban and Psylocke were abysmal. And, I have to say, Psylocke psi-blade is not a lightsaber; it's a psychic knife that doesn't have any physical manifestation. (Unless they changed that sometime since I quit reading comics?)

The story is plenty bloated, too. The whole capture by Stryker is completely superfluous to the actual story and is only there so that they can work Wolverine into the movie in a completely gratuitous killfest. That was at least half an hour of the movie that could have been used to further the elements of the actual story. Or cut out completely.

The Magneto plot line is also -- I don't know what to call it -- unnecessary. It provides the only moment of the film with any real emotional content, but, considering where things are left at the end of Days of Future Past, it felt contrived. That would be because it was.

All of that said, it might sound like I didn't like the movie, which is not precisely true. I didn't like it, but I also didn't not like it. It wasn't horrible; it just wasn't all that good. Still, I'd watch it again before Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice any day of the week.

I'm not a fan of the whole re-booting thing, but the X-Men is a franchise that needs to be re-booted and, this time, it needs to start with a plan, lay a foundation, and grow from there. It's too big a universe to keep throwing pieces of it in without laying the groundwork for them.

X-Men: Days of Future Past (a movie review post)

There are times when a movie fails to work for me because it's an adaptation that fails to actually adapt the source material. However, the source material for this movie has become so broad that you can't accuse it of not being faithful to it because you just can't tell what it's trying to be faithful to in regards to said source material. That said, there is one image that will always be associated in my mind with the "Days of Future Past" story line:

And, yes, Wolverine actually dies in that issue but 1. It ended up being a future that was prevented. 2. It was before Wolverine had become "too big to fail" (too popular to die). You'll see none of that in this movie. No, my problem with the movie is that it fails to be faithful just to the Fox X-Men franchise and, really, there's not so much there that it's impossible to do.
But more on that in a minute.

Yes, there will be spoilers. Consider yourselves warned.

As a movie, X-Men: Days of Future Past is fine if somewhat (a lot) predictable. The opening fight against the sentinels is fantastic. Well, except for the part where Kitty Pryde can send people into the past. What the heck? The powers of Kitty have long been established, not just within the comics but within the Fox X-Men universe, so giving Kitty the ability to send people consciously back in time seems a bit gratuitous. If they wanted a mutant to do that, why not just put in a mutant to do that rather than give that power to someone who shouldn't have it? Or, you know, include Forge in the lineup, because he would have made a nice addition to the movie.

The other main issue I had with the movie was Xavier's struggle with what amounted to drug addiction. That whole thing felt easy and contrived and, while I get that they needed to present Wolverine with some obstacles to overcome to complete his mission, that one felt gratuitous. The idea that Xavier would sacrifice his mutant ability so that he could walk again and pretend to forget his pain was too far outside of the character we know to really be believable. At least, that's true coming at it from the standpoint of the comics. Maybe, it's plausible looking at it from just the movies, but I'm not feeling it that way, either.

But, really, the movie is fine. Well, except for the appearance of Quicksilver, which was completely out of context. We get Quicksilver but not the Scarlet Witch nor even any mention of her. Also, there was no acknowledgement that Quicksilver is Magneto's son and only even a very vague possibility of that even being true in the movie. So why use the character if you're not actually going to use the character? Just make that some other character that only exists in the movie universe. Honestly, it felt more like a jab at Disney and Marvel Studios who have Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch lined up for the next Avengers movie.

However, the scene where he saves everyone in the kitchen is fantastic.

But, really, the movie is fine. It is. It's enjoyable. The cast is great. Of course, Jackman carries the film. His performance of Wolverine continues to be flawless. And Jennifer Lawrence was so much better in this one than she was in First Class. I continue to like Shawn Ashmore as Bobby Drake, and I really wanted to see more of Bishop and Blink, and I don't mean more of them in combat. It would have been nice to see them as characters, too.

All of that said, the thing that disturbed my enjoyment the most was the feeling that the whole movie was an excuse for Bryan Singer to fix all the problems he caused when he dropped out of X-Men 3 to go off and make that horrible Superman movie. So let's look at that a moment:
Singer had a plan for X-Men at the time. No one really knows what that plan was because he didn't share much of it and I kind of doubt he even knows, now, what he was doing then. But, in the middle of pre-production for X-Men 3, not only does he go off to make Superman, but he convinces James Marsden (Cyclops) to go with him (and some of his writers from the previous X-Men movies). Understandably, Fox gets pissed at both of them and vows that neither will ever work with them again and, just to prove their point, kills Cyclops off during the opening sequence of The Last Stand.

From there, a bunch of stuff happened in X3 and the other X-Men related movies that Singer wouldn't have done but, you know, he wasn't there. Fox and Singer make up; Singer returns to X-Men; Singer wants his characters back, those characters being Cyclops and Jean Grey. Basically, Days of Future Past is a story that creates a brand new X-Men world and allows Singer to ignore all previous X-Men continuity. He gets to bring back Cyclops and Jean and do whatever he wants from this point on. Until he decides to, again, abandon Fox's X-Men and leave someone else to try to figure out what he was doing. The whole thing lessens my enjoyment of Days of Future Past, which may not be fair to the actual movie, but Singer bothers me enough that I can't just ignore it.

In the final analysis, if you've liked the X-Men movies, there's no good reason that you won't like this one. Probably, it's one of the top three out of the, what?, seven movies. I think my count there is correct. As a series of movies, the X-Men movies still fail to approach what Marvel has been doing over at Disney but, as a single movie, this one is probably on par with the Iron Man sequels. It's good; it's just not awesome.

The Wolverine and a Bowl of Pop Culture

Does everyone have a bowl? Yes, you have to bring your own; I just don't have enough. And a spoon, too. No chopsticks, because we don't want to leave them standing upright in our pop culture, right? It's bad luck. Evidently. Anyway, get your bowls and your spoons, and pour yourself a heaping bowl of pop culture. But no milk; Wolvie doesn't like it.

I wanted very badly to not want to go see The Wolverine in the theater. Why pay for another movie I was just going to be disappointed in, right? I mean, this year has been particularly good for disappointing movies. And that doesn't even take into account the other Wolverine movie, one of the worst super hero movies made so far (and all because of the ending). [It's amazing how a botched ending can ruin an otherwise decent movie.] But Wolverine has been in my top three favorite heroes since... oh, well, a long time, and Hugh Jackman just nails that role, so I couldn't convince myself to wait. I'm actually glad that I didn't; some times, it's good to go into something with, basically, no expectations.

As it turned out, The Wolverine was much better than I expected it to be, and I actually enjoyed most of it. It has its issues, but, at least, they weren't really bad story-telling issues. The story, amazingly enough, was pretty solid and managed to not go off the cliff that the origin movie did. Of course, the story is only "pretty solid" if you look at it within the context of the X-Men movies. This movie has nothing to do with the comics other than that they pull some familiar characters from the Wolverine mythos to use in the movie. If you were hoping for anything resembling an adaptation of the Frank Miller/Chris Claremont Wolverine mini-series from the early '80s, you're not going to find that here. Okay, you'll get something vaguely resembling it. Very vaguely. He does fight some Hand ninjas. Except their not called that. So we're back to that "vaguely" again.

The thing to know about The Wolverine is that it's not about what it's about it. Within the context of the X-Men movies, the story is here to bridge the gap between X-Men: The Last Stand and the forthcoming X-Men: Days of Future Past and deal with the ramifications of how Last Stand ended. Basically, it's to get Logan to let go of the death of Jean and his part in it. With that goal in mind, The Wolverine actually accomplished its purpose and in a way that made sense. The micro-plot of just this one movie wasn't too bad either, even if it did have more than its share of "what the heck?" moments.

Spoiler alert:
The biggest issue with the movie is the sleight-of-hand they play with Logan's healing power. The dying old guy wants Logan's ability, and the best the writers could come up with is that the old dude is going to "steal" it. Not duplicate it, steal it. Which sounds like they're going to do some kind of thing like when Rogue absorbs other mutants' powers, but, no, the old guy is just going to drill into Logan's bone marrow and transfer the power to himself, which doesn't make any sense, but I'll give it a pass on the handwavium principle. Except that they also "suppress" his healing power using a little "Matrix" bug that gets on Wolvie's heart, and they don't explain that, either, especially after making it seem as if this is some other mutant thing before we find out it's a device. Really, you can only get a pass on one of these things in the movie. The deal with the tiny robot is that they want Wolverine to rip his own heart out to get rid of the thing, so I can see that they're going for the "cool factor" with that, but, then, they don't show it, so they lose out on that, anyway. And it leaves all kinds of questions: does the little robot bug suppress all mutant abilities or just Logan's? Or just Logan's healing factor? It's hard to tell, because he really doesn't use any of his heightened senses in the movie at all, so we don't know if he still has those or not. Of course, there's also the argument that Logan's healing power should have just expelled the little robot bug to begin with, but the movie Wolverine isn't quite as powerful as the comic book Wolverine.

And neither is adamantium, evidently, because we again have a "bullet piercing adamantium" situation in that the old guy cuts off Wolverine's claws to get at his bone marrow. It's slightly more believable than the bullet being fired into Logan's head but not by much.

At any rate, those things are just issues with story points not the story itself, and we have to deal with those all the time. Like people surviving explosions by jumping into water or standing behind a wall or whatever. So, whereas there are some... stupid? silly? okay, stupid... things within the story, the plot of The Wolverine holds up both on the level of there being a villain intent upon stealing Logan's healing powers and as a vehicle for Logan to get over have killed Jean.

Having said all of that, The Wolverine is not a movie you have to see in the theater. It's not like Pacific Rim or Man of Steel (although I think it's a better movie than both of those) that really need to be seen on the big screen to get the full effect of the scope of the action. You can just as easily wait for the DVD for this one, and, honestly, I doubt there's anything necessary in this movie for the overall X-Men story line. If you like Wolverine, it's probably worth seeing it, but you're not going to feel like you missed anything if you give this one a pass on the way to Days of Future Past.