Sunday, June 5, 2016

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

What I love about the X-Men series is the complex discussion of politics and the revisionist history making for an engaging story. This movie doesn't do that. Instead, like a typical superhero movie, it delves into mythology, which is less interesting. And X-Men has gotten extraordinarily confusing in terms of timeline. How could this big huge Apocalypse thing have happened in the 80s and we never heard about it in the original trilogy? There is the welcome re-insertion of Jean Grey (Sophie Turner from Game of Thrones!), Nightcrawler, Storm (who is apparently Egyptian now?) and Cyclops, but Angel is a puzzle. Is this a different Angel than the one from the original trilogy? Because his appearance in this film does not fit in with his role in the original. There is a small cameo by Wolverine, which is bizarre because Wolverine usually has a bigger part in X-Men. And if he wasn't going to have a real role, we didn't need the two minutes. The after-credits scene also alluded to something related to Wolverine, probably to connect this to his next standalone movie. The film's greatest strength is fitting Jean Grey's development back into the narrative, seeing as she is one of the most important mutants.  Usually, one of the high points is the Magneto-Professor X dynamic, but I don't think they got enough scenes together this film. And there was really nothing added to their relationship in this story line. Hopefully, the next X-Men movie returns to its roots.

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