This year has already been a great one for comic book films, starting with the Valentines Day romp of Deadpool, and the magnificence of Captain America: Civil War. It has also been a bit of a disappointment, with Batman V Superman leaving its community split between those that hate it, and those that desperately defend it, in spite of its critical drubbing. X-Men has had a string of successes in the last few years, maintaining a pretty high-standard of entertainment, and proving that Marvel Studios isn't the only safe bet in town for a good night at the movies. X-Men: Apocalypse wasn't my most anticipated film this year, but I'm glad to report that it delivers pretty much exactly the level of action, character, and social awareness that you've come to expect from the franchise. However, it also falls victim to its competition, as movies like Deadpool (a loose alumni of the X-Men franchise) gave a fresh breath of air to the comic book genre just recently, while Apocalypse rather fittingly sticks with the kind of overdone "big baddie wants to end the world" scenario. Civil War will still remain my pick for best comic book movie of the year for now, as it took the Avengers, a team known for saving the world on an epic scale, and boiled its story-line down to a deeply character-driven narrative, devoid of the stereotypes that have started to become routine in comic movies. Don't get me wrong, Apocalypse is great, and you'll love it if you have any love for fairly straight forward comic movie, but it is following some pretty tough acts this year.
Apocalypse is one of the X-Men universe's most popular, and threatening villains. The comic books have dedicated year-long events to the character, and he remains as one of the biggest baddies in the whole Marvel universe. Making a film about him seems like it would need to be big, and carry a hell of a lot of gravity, and X-Men: Apocalypse certainly tries its hardest to deliver. The stakes are about as high as they've ever been, with the titular villain attempting to wipe out all of humanity in a grand scheme that would leave only the strongest mutants alive to rule the world. So, great right? We've had Deadpool, and Civil War both offer smaller, more personal stories, it's probably time for a big doomsday scenario (actually, considering Batman V Superman, maybe we shouldn't ever ask for Doomsday again). Brian Singer, long-running X-Men director, does an outstanding job of building the seriousness of the threat that Apocalypse represents, and bringing to a head the character arcs of the generation 2 actors that started in X-Men: First Class. The film's biggest reward is its final shots, where the classic X-Men team assembles in full, zany uniforms, finally paying off on the years of black leather biker outfits, and half-measures towards the classic X-Men aesthetic. It's all so good, and yet I somehow feel like this could have been better.
***Minor Spoilers Ahead***
Call me a spoiled comic book fanboy, but I can't help but wonder if the character of Apocalypse deserved something bigger. Part of the problem with the current era of comic book movies is that we the audience are finally becoming as jaded as the comic book readers of old. We saw the Avengers save New York from an alien invasion, and then saw them prevent a comet from obliterating the world. We've had Superman save/annihilate major cities to save the world twice recently. We just had a movie called X-Men: Apocalypse, and the next Thor film will cover Ragnarok, the revelations chapter of Norse mythology. The doom of the world being thwarted by spandex-clad heroes is becoming the one thing that it should never be: routine. We've kind of gone over this all before, and it seems like we the fans are getting harder and harder to please. Marvel has found a way to address this by introducing Thanos, a villain so serious and powerful that he's been kept in reserve, operating from the shadows before he will finally be revealed in Avengers: Infinity Wars. This use of a recurring character that is just too big, and too powerful to deal with directly builds a suspense, and sense of impending doom that far outweighs a villain that is simply introduced, built up, and defeated in one film. This is kind of what I felt was missing for good old Apocalypse. What made Apocalypse great in the comics was his inevitability. No matter what you seemed to try, the bastard always survived, and always remained impossible to defeat. While it may be a slight spoiler, I must now mention that the good guys win in X-Men: Apocalypse (oh, shut up, of course they did), and Apocalypse is definitively defeated. While the film does a great job of making his defeat seem all but impossible, and makes it really come down to the wire, it does end with Apocalypse being destroyed on a pretty much atomic level. For a character that is "invincible", and has lived for thousands of years, to be beaten and definitively killed in a single film (with an in-film chronology of maybe a month at the most), it kind of feels anti-climactic. Maybe the creative team could have chosen to draw it out over more films, or end with at least some ambiguity over the finality of Apocalypse's death, and that might have made it more satisfying.
In summary, this film felt a little routine, and I kind of wish Apocalypse had been given a bit longer in this universe to really build his sense of threat, but all of that aside, I also feel that Singer, and Fox Studios are still safe hands for this franchise. X-Men: Apocalypse looks great, the characters are wonderful, and the villain works extremely well with what he has. I'm still kind of glad that X-Men is separate from the Marvel Comic Universe movies, since it allows it to act as its own player in the game, and we're not stuck with a duopoly of Disney and Warner Bros. Given that the first film came out 16 years ago, it is encouraging to see that the franchise, and its director, have still got the touch that helped save the comic movie genre.
