X-Men: Apocalypse

Spoiler: My thoughts no real spoilers, but just in case.

It was alright. Seemed like more of a follow up to X-men First Class than Days of Future Past. Quicksilver is the best part of the film, but not as good as his appearance in Days of Future past. The whole age of characters thing is weird with many of them looking almost the same as they did in 1960. Way too much destruction and not enough character development. Do we really have to spend a decent part of yet another X-Men film meeting the characters and establishing the team? Xavier/Eric dynamic is always interesting, but it should grow at some point.

My movie ranking
Future Past
First Class
X2
X1 - becasue it introduced Wolverine.
Apocalypse
X3

 

How did it do at the USA box office ?

 

I just got back from seeing it and I liked it. I liked it much better than Civil War because I didn't find any part of X-Men to be boring. Civil War bored me for the first 45 minutes or so and had too much comedy during serious action parts.

Anyway, either I imagined it or just misheard, but towards the end, Mystique is talking to Magneto and I could've sworn she called him Charles (Professor X's name) instead of Erik (Magneto's name). If that truly was the case in hearing correctly either that was a mistake they overlooked during editing or I just wasn't paying attention and Mystique was trying to communicate and speaking with Professor X when he was using his mind.

Yep. Sophie, Fassbender and McAvoy I thought did the best acting jobs. I also agree that Olivia Munn's character and Angel were wasted. But, IMO, the biggest waste of them all was Storm. Storm didn't do squat until the very end. And I also agree that Quicksilver was one of the biggest highlights in the movie. Beast, Cyclops, Mystique and Nightcrawler also had some key highlights too. A cameo by a famous/popular character was nice also. I wonder who that is? Duh!

I liked this one better than Days Of Future Past but not as well as First Class.

Let's see now, 2 X-Men movies in a row with Game Of Thrones actors. The last one had Tyrion Lannister trying to take over the world with Sentinel beings and in this one we had Sansa Stark trying to save the world. Next one should have Dany trying to unite the world with the use of Dragons.


Edit:

One thing I did appreciate was how we find out how a thick-haired Professor X becomes bald.

Also, I don't agree with a lot of different reviews I read about the movie. Many critics complained that there were too many characters to keep track of. Usually, I agree with this in movies when there are too many to keep track of, but it wasn't the case for me in this one. I thought Civil War had way too many characters, though.

 

Turner seemed to be pretty good at conveying some sense of both weakness and strength, which is probably a decent read on the character of Jean Grey as a high school student. There's plenty more growing room for Storm, probably in the next movie, but the character was essential to our introduction to another character as well as having a fairly useful and clear-cut motivation. The more I think about it, I think Quicksilver was my favorite portrayal. He must be fun to write. "Go fast, make jokes, be awesome to film. Done."

Emilia Clarke as Katherine Pryde with her canonical pet dragon Lockheed, perhaps?

I concur. Whatever else its faults---and they do exist---this particular script managed to give the majority of the characters enough to either differentiate their character or give us some sense of their motivations. I'm not entirely sure what motivated the Angel character, though. I wonder if something was cut from the script or the film.

 

Can't speak for alexpop, but it's not difficult to view a film before it's released in this day and time.

 

Bryan Singer started the whole superhero movie craze off with his first two X-Men movies, which at the time seemed to have more believable, substantial characterizations than earlier comic book flicks and deftly juggled all the characters and their powers, with some metaphorical dimensions to give the stories some heft.

Cut to 15 years later and Apocalypse just seemed like average superhero product to me, with lots of cluttered activity going on but no real investment from anyone beyond the financial.

Magneto and Xavier played out half-hearted variations of their scenes from the earlier films, Jennifer Lawrence was sleepwalking, actors like Nicholas Hoult and Rose Byrne had nothing to do, Oscar Isaac could have been anyone under all that makeup, and this new series' weird relationship to time and continuity, where decades pass between each episode but nobody gets any older*, and origin stories from the earlier movies are contradicted, makes the stories seem weightless and disposable. Quicksilver was still fun, there were some moments that felt suitably epic, and there was nothing really bad about it, but I felt like this was the emptiest of the X-Men movies, and whatever mojo Singer had back at the start of his career has dissipated into hackwork.

*I suppose this is true to the source material, and maybe they're having fun with that -- like Xavier telling Moira "you haven't aged a day!"-- but the more carefully plotted and internally consistent Marvel Cinematic Universe has turned out to be more satisfying.

 

Agreed

Also, I think there was no need for these last three movies to take place in 1963, 1973 and 1983 if you're shooting them almost back to back. Could have been 1963, 1968, 1973. And the age issue would have been somewhat more tolerable...

First pic: Charles Xavier in 1963, 1973,1983. Second pic: Charles Xavier in 2000 Come on....

 

Well said.

 

Inconsistencies with the timelines aside, I enjoyed this one. I liked it better than DoFP.

 

I enjoyed this one well enough, though it didn't spend enough time on any character development. Saw it Alamo Drafthouse and they had a 90's arcade cabinet that required no tokens in the lobby. Instant flashbacks!

 

Great trailer, even better film

 

I haven't gotten around to seeing it. Hopefully, I will soon.

 

Thought you'd be first in line?

BD 3D steelbook will be out in a few months, I'll be double dipping.

 

Saw it in Cinemark XD.

Quicksilver I thought was best character with Nightcrawler close second.

Enjoyed it a lot.

 

I thought it was kind of meh. It was good but not up to the previous standards set with the exception of "Last Stand" which bungles one of the best X-Men stories. The Latest film is still better than "Last" which starts off very promising but falls apart after the first 30 minutes to a very uninspired tale except for the conclusion between Wolverine and Jean.

 

The new economic model is to let foreign territories make a huge chunk of cash before it opens in the US because, generally, Asia is more forgiving and enthusiastic about Hollywood blockbusters.

 

I know little about the film industry but I do find it somewhat surprising that in 2016, some US movies open in other countries earlier than the US, in a world where plotlines get posted online the night of release. Surely this sort of practice is not good for domestic US sales?

 

Even if it's a bad film people pay attention to grosses and foreign countries as mentioned that foreign markets are more forgiving and it makes a film look "good" particularly if a film isn't screened in advance for critics.

 

Keep in mind, the studios don't care about leaks or reviews. Only box office. And releasing Hollywood movies in foreign territories first almost always results in higher gross.

 

80 million over the 4 day weekend!

 

Not breaking box office records, but healthy ?

 

Not as good as the other 2 films, but still worth seeing.

 

So basically Fox was successful. No one has a reason to hate this film and people feel that they got their monies worth.

 

Pretty much, but that gets you to 650-750 million, but not the target of a billion or more work wide.

 

You've hit the nail on the head. I also felt that there was no real character development of Apocalpyse. It was sacrificed to action. Ome or two scenes giving us I go about his past, etc. would have done wonders for the film.

It's not a bad film but it doesn't deliever in the same way that, say, Captain America:Civil Wars does combining action and moving characters forward in their development. It can be done. Singer' s done it but not here. It's like iptjis film was made by someone other than someome who has a good understanding of the X-Universe.

It's still well made and entertaining.