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So
to quickly make an attempt at filling you in on the story, I'd say
that Singer has been preparing for the upcoming Independence Day Resurgence by
marathon-ing his favourite Roland Emmerich movies. So we start off
with some Stargate-esque bullshit in which a big bad mutant
does some big bad mutant bullshit in ancient Egypt. Then he goes to
sleep for what must be a few centuries which is what most of us
obviously felt like doing during Emmerich's more-shit-than-actual-shit Anonymous film. When said mutant wakes up, he feels
an urge to destroy the world because for some reason he decides to
wake up in the 1980's, and who wouldn't want to destroy that world?
You've been asleep for hundreds of years and suddenly we're prancing
about with shoulder pads and mullets and raving about the place to
Banana-fucking-rama?! Waking up in the 80's after centuries of
slumber must be equivalent to the rage I feel being woken up before
midday on a weekend. Either the snooze button is getting pushed again
or I'm going to burn the fucking house down. At this point the X-Men
are all scattered about with their own various little agendas, however
they decide to come together to stop this groggy twat from destroying
the world. It's at this point that Singer then gets to the
Independence Day, Day After Tomorrow, 2012, part of Emmerich's
filmography by treating the planet with the same destructive power
and contempt as Lindsey Lohan has applied to her own fucking career.
Now,
despite the fact that I once pretended to be Tarzan before slipping
off the edge of the bath and being rushed to hospital for cracking my
balls on the the sink, I'm not actually stupid. I can see that X-Men:
Apocalypse has its problems, and we can go into them shortly, but
I'd be lying if I told you that I didn't really fucking enjoy this
movie. Objectively there's absolutely no question at all that this
film is waaaay too long, however from a more subjective point of view
I really didn't care. The other problem is that in the past, the X-Men
movies have had some degree of subtext in the way they kind of
dealt with issues of race and/or sexuality- this film doesn't really
have any of that, with it putting more emphasis on its more 'smashy,
smashy, things go boom' agenda. However despite my lack of
homosexuality, and having had my bones wrapped in a layer of pure
honkey-skin, I've loved the X-Men since I was fresh out of
nappies. If you ask me, I'd say that I'm an only child because my
parents got a kid that was so perfect on their first attempt that any
subsequent off-spring would only be a disappointment by comparison.
However if you ask my Mum, she claims that they actually decided not
to have any more because they 'got it so wrong the first time that
another child wouldn't be worth the risk'. Fucking bitch.
I
only mention all of this because I believe that the reason I've
always loved the X-Men is because it's about a family composed
entirely out of loners who became friends. Well, that, and it features
a man who can make knives come out of his fucking knuckles. I can't
relate to the 'minority suffering prejudice' analogy of the series,
however beyond dashing good looks and impressively large genitals,
one of the many characteristics of an only child is the need to
custom-make our own family and siblings from friends around us.
Essentially we do to our chums what Madonna and Angelina Jolie do to
little African babies. We find them and we keep them. As a child, I
therefore fell in love with all of the characters in the X-Men
world and the various loyalties that they all held to one
another. You would be absolutely right to slag this film off for
disposing its previous subtext in favour of the kind of explosions
that Michael Bay farts out in his sleep, however Apocalypse still
has the one thing that I've always loved and that's the characters.
People talk about how The Phantom Menace ruined their
childhood which I can't say was true for me. I was ten when that
movie came out and so at an age in which I was too stupid to know any
better. However as much as I'd like to say that I had a trauma free
upbringing, I obviously can't. I might not have been born into poverty
and I didn't lose my innocence with a creepy uncle in his tree house
...however I did have to experience the travesty of X-Men-fucking-3.
In
that film, Professor X became an unquestionable bell-end; Cyclops was
killed off with the kind of casualness that most of us apply to
taking our daily dump; and the Dark Phoenix Saga was about as wasted
as Charlie Sheen after a night of allegedly spreading his HIV. Since
that third instalment Deliverance-style fucked the franchise
into the ground, they've since been trying to hide the evidence like a
Hollywood fixer with blood on his hands. With First Class, they
basically hit the re-boot button and with Days Of Future Past, they
time travelled away as much of the damage as they possibly could. One
of the reasons I really liked Apocalypse was because, with the
slate now pretty clean, the film starts to rebuild everything that the
third instalment broke. So here we get hints towards the Phoenix story
being re-told, Nightcrawler returns, and Cyclops has become an even
more enjoyable character than any of the previous films ever allowed
him to be. No offence to James Marsden but he did occasionally come
across as dull as balls when stood next to fucking Wolverine.
Essentially this movie builds up an X-Men team that I really want to
see more of, with McAvoy now also fully owning a role that Patrick
Stewart seemed irreplaceable in. Throw in a bit more of Days Of
Future Past's scene-stealing Quicksilver, make him do his shit to
the sound of Eurythmics, and to misquote the song, 'who am I to
fucking disagree?!'
So
going back to my original point, I do agree that the film is too long
but I was just happy to spend the time in the company of these
characters as we finally cleared the franchise completely of X-Men
3. A lot of the reviews have criticised this film's third act
destruction as being on par with the anal-raping that Metropolis took
at the end of Man Of Steel, however in defence of Apocalypse
I'd say that at least it's the bad guys doing the damage here.
The problem with Man Of Steel wasn't specifically the damage
that took place but rather in that it showed a fundamental lack of
understanding of the character of Superman to have him partake in it.
Not only is Snyder's Superman responsible for the death of thousands
of innocent people, but he even wears his undies under his pants. I
mean who the fuck is he!? In this movie it's Apocalypse doing most of
the damage which, unless that's a Little John-style ironic name is
kind of what I'd expect him to be doing really. Singer has said all
along that he wanted to make an Emmerich inspired action movie and so
to criticise this for its level of destruction is to basically
criticise the disaster movie genre as a whole. So you know.. fuck
you.
Of
course, several reviews have also pointed out that the film doesn't
even attempt to acknowledge the suffering of the innocent people that
would have been caught up in this disaster. Oh, and even though he
might be fucking up the world, they claim that Apocalypse himself is
about as interesting and well developed as a shop manakin that's been
made out of shit and become deformed in the sun. Well.. yeah, alright,
fair enough. They have a point there. Despite being played by Oscar
Isaac whose current run of performances have resulted in him being
hotter than both the planet's molten core crossed with The Fappening,
Apocalypse is essentially just that Power Ranger villain that we all
thought he looked like, but with the creepy whisper of Mission:
Impossible - Rogue Nation's Sean Harris. Perhaps as a result of
its lack of subtext, there's also a lightness to this movie that
makes it feel like a lesser entry into the franchise. Although to
suggest that it's as bad as X-Men 3, as some reviews have, is
just fucking stupid. Perhaps the other problem is the brilliance of
Captain America: Civil War and the MCU in general which
has a cohesiveness and continuity that even the biggest X-Men fan
would find tricky to defend. Didn't Mystique capture Wolverine at the
end of Days Of Future Past? Why has Moira MacTaggert not aged
a day in twenty years? Sorry-- what accent does Magneto have?
Then
again a lot of people seemed angry by the reviews of Batman V
Superman because they wrongly assumed it wasn't total shit.
Maybe, like both them and the kind of person that asks “why do I
always fall for the bastards”, it's simply that as a fan of the
franchise I'm a little in denial. I'm not saying that some of the
terrible reviews for X-Men: Apocalypse aren't making
completely valid points- I read Empire Magazine's two star review of
it and couldn't find a single fault with what they said. However for
me personally I felt that I got enough of what I wanted out of it
that I was able to forgive it for the things it lacked. Beyond the
film taking a big old smelly dump on top of X-Men 3, this film
also features a Cyclops scene that was originally intended for a
re-edit of the very first X-Men movie and a psychic battle
that was originally going to feature in First Class before
Inception was released with something similar. As fan pleasing
goes, the only thing that I wasn't provided with was permission to
toss one off during the scenes featuring a semi-dressed Storm.
Objectively I'd say that this film was an average film rather than a
bad one, but throwing on all the subjective shit that I love, I came
away happy. If it was a meal then it's one that I know wasn't
particularly nutritious but fuck it, it tasted good to me. Thanks for
reading, motherfuckers, and see you next time.
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