X-Men: Nice Try, But Only Magneto Can Get Away with Mass Murder

Hello, there! This is the first of two posts about X-Men villain En Sabah Nur, aka Apocalypse. This is a review of X-Men: Apocalypse and will be followed by another review of The Further Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix. What do these stories have in common? Well, they both show Apocalypse attempting to fulfil his plans to cleanse the world of the weak and failing spectacularly. Aw, poor genocidal baby...

I know people in general hate this movie, and while I’d never call it good, I have to admit it annoyed me a lot less than X-Men: First Class. That’s probably because I don’t care much about Apocalypse as a character, but the rich assholes from the Hellfire Club are some of my favourite X-Men villains. All I know about Apocalypse is that he created Mister Sinister, has the power to make Angel scary, and has four minions known as the Four Horsemen. Oh, and that he’s grey, but for some reason they decided to make him blue in the movie. Anyway, most of it checks out. It also helps that by the time X-Men: Apocalypse was released, I’d already given up on expecting any sort of faithfulness to the source material.

Another prequel, another decade, and everyone still looks the same. Professor Xavier finally has a proper mutant school, Magneto got away with trying to assassinate the President of the United States and now has a family, and Mystique keeps travelling around the globe saving young mutants and dropping them off at Professor X’s school. Look, do I have complaints about how the comics were adapted? God, yes! But after one original trilogy, two previous movies in the prequel trilogy, various Wolverine movies, and two Deadpool movies, complaining about any of that feels kinda pointless.

Unpopular Opinion Alert: do I prefer Rebecca Romijn’s coolly lethal Mystique from the original movies? Yes. However, I think Jennifer Lawrence’s Mystique is probably closer to the non-pathologically treacherous Raven Darkholme who fell in love with Destiny and adopted Rogue. Also, at least she’s doing her own thing instead of taking orders from Magneto, so that’s good.

Finally, Cyclops and Jean show up! Nightcrawler, too, though they ditched the religious side of the character. Oh, and there’s Jubilee who really shouldn’t be their contemporary. I think Jubilee not having any lines has become as much of an X-Men movie tradition as Magneto getting away with mass murder. There’s Quicksilver, too, but I don’t think the school rescue sequence managed to repeat the awesomeness of the prison break in X-Men: Days of Future Past. Moira McTaggart is also back and after shooting metal bullets at a guy who can control metal thus contributing to paralyze Professor X, she fucks up a ritual and accidentally helps Apocalypse break free from his ancient prison. Just think of all the stuff that happened in that place since he was imprisoned, and he stayed buried. Then Moira shows up and five minutes later people are being swallowed by sand. Her ability to inadvertently make a bad situation worse should probably be considered a superpower.

So, they tried to make Angel more impressive even before he became Archangel by giving him wing claws. It’s better than just fluffy feathers, but he’s still just a guy with wings and if anyone cuts them off... I don’t like that Psylocke is Caliban’s bodyguard, but at least she has her comic book powers (yes, the bar is set that low). I liked this version of Caliban. I know he doesn’t have much in common with comic book Caliban, but that one tried to forcibly marry a teenaged Kitty Pryde, so fuck him. Of course, the biggest addition is young Storm. There’s a good story to tell about a young woman being suckered into joining a murderous cult, but the movie doesn’t really go there. Oh, and is there a rule that says the characters can’t have their original hair colours? First Rogue gets the white stripe because Magneto’s machine almost killed her and now Storm gets her white hair because of Apocalypse’s power boost.

Magneto’s surprise family gets accidentally killed by cops, which gives him an excuse to join Apocalypse’s merry band of mass murderers and disrupt the Earth’s magnetic core. So, here’s my problem with Magneto’s little murder rampages: the movies keep using the Holocaust as a justification for his behaviour, but both here and in X2, he does absolutely nothing to shield his fellow Jews from the damage he’s causing. Really, unless there’s an abnormal percentage of Jewish mutants, he would’ve ended up doing a better job than the Nazis if Storm hadn’t been able to get to Professor X in time in X2. As for his fellow mutants, in X-Men: The Last Stand, he uses the weaker ones as shields during the final attack. In X-Men: Apocalypse, he takes it one step further and just causes indiscriminate destruction without caring who it affects. Of course, he does nothing when Apocalypse wrecks the school to kidnap Professor X. He’s not fighting for justice or freedom, he’s taking out his anger on random people. And the movies just continuously let him off the hook. Ugh!

Oh, look, it’s the obligatory Wolverine cameo! God, I’m so tired of this character! And why is the stupid love triangle being pushed when Cyclops and Jean haven’t even had any time to get to know each other? I hate it here and I hate it in the comics. Fuck off, Wolverine!

Moving on. Apocalypse is the kind of villain that generates a lot of cheesiness. Unfortunately, the movie never becomes cheesy awesome and just stops at cheesy. Still, he's a real global menace and the movie does a good job showing the reach of his powers, which in turn makes the inevitable Magneto and Storm redemption even worse. Are we just supposed to forget all the death and destruction they helped cause? It also makes the final confrontation between the makeshift X-Men team and Apocalypse + the Horsemen in an empty town look strangely small. After watching all those final battles in Marvel movies where the heroes fight a faceless army of endless cannon fodder, it’s weird to see a climatic fight featuring only a dozen characters.

Liked seeing Psylocke using her psychic katana but how is her psychic lasso strong enough to pull a plane down but too weak to break Beast’s neck? Oh, my God, Angel is finally threatening, with metal wings and throwing metal spikes! (Which, by the way, is what Riptide should’ve been doing in X-Men: First Class) Now he’ll be able to do more than flap his wings at people and... and he’s dead. That was quick. They could’ve at least let him walk away like Psylocke did. I can’t believe it took seeing Apocalypse trying to choke Mystique for Storm to turn against him! Did she miss all the mass destruction and genocidal mania? Of course, Magneto takes forever to switch sides.

Professor X’s psychic battle with Apocalypse gave me second-hand embarrassment, especially when I remembered that the actors do all the dramatic yelling in front of a green screen. But hey, at least Jean gets to become the Phoenix and not go crazy. (And yes, she definitely becomes the Phoenix without setting foot in outer space, she even generates a bird-shaped flame!) I’m guessing Professor X changed his approach on how to deal with her growing powers because of the mind melding with his future self in X-Men: Days of Future Past. This also explains why Jean’s alive when Wolverine returns to the school.

Was I supposed to find the scene of Magneto rebuilding the school alongside Jean to be moving? Because I didn’t. This character has been stale since X2, doing the same shit over and over again. The prequels could’ve changed that, but they didn’t. Professor X, Beast, and Mystique all showed character growth in the prequels, yet Magneto just seems to stay the same. This wouldn’t be a problem if the movies didn’t insist on keeping him as part of the main cast. If they wanted to bring him back in X-Men: Apocalypse, they could’ve at least have him be on the X-Men’s side from the start. I don’t care that he was also one of the Horsemen in the comics. They’ve changed so much that there was no need to have Magneto go bad again. I know people didn’t like Mystique becoming the team leader, but I think that ending made sense for the movie version of the character. And how funny is it that Olivia Munn complained that the filmmakers didn’t know Psylocke had a twin brother? This is the same movie that established Apocalypse had been buried alive since ancient Egypt and still had an end credits scene referencing Mister Sinister! How the hell is that possible?

Even though I have many issues with this movie, I still think they should’ve just ended the prequels here, instead of ruining the Dark Phoenix Saga. Again. Professor X encouraging Jean to embrace her powers and her then destroying Apocalypse were one of the few good things about X-Men: Apocalypse. It also allowed a franchise that began in a concentration camp to end on a happier note. There was no reason to shit all over that. Also, why is Simon Kinberg so insistent on making Professor X the bad guy in that story? He had nothing to do with Jean losing it, FFS! Good thing there’ll be no more movies in this convoluted series.

By Danforth