I'm a fan of the X-Men movies, but unfortunately this one wasn't what I was hoping it'd be. There were some nice things - I liked the leadership and increased focus on Cyclops, Apocalypse growing in size and pummeling Xavier from the trailer, and the Quicksilver sequence was again visually fun if a little contrived. I thought the opening sequence started off looking like it was a completely different franchise, but when things amped up I found it really enjoyable. Not to the extent of X2's Nightcrawler or DOFP's Sentinels, but it was good energetic fun. I also love the look of Psylocke and dare I say Archangel. There was unfortunately little outside of the promotional materials that felt like a surprise - probably only the Egypt intro and Caliban's scenes stood out to me because we hadn't so much as a close up of him let alone clips in the trailers. I did like Caliban, but he wasn't the biggest part of the film. Hope he turns up again later on.

It's a fairly average movie, entertaining enough, but serves more like an 'episode' that moves a season along but isn't remarkable enough on its own to warrant much rewatching. I don't want to say it's not good, but it's a firm seventh for me if I had to rank the nine entries in the franchise.

Spoiler territory: (Highlight to read)

I felt like Magneto, Quicksilver, Mystique and Beast were all fairly poor? I've seen reviews criticising the acting from a few of them, but I think it was maybe more the material they were given. I didn't notice the acting being off, just the characters and their motivations seemed ropey. Magneto has some great scenes as per but once he meets Apocalypse he shrinks to the background and becomes the silent henchman I hoped he wouldn't be. Mystique is ironically less involved than she was in most other films - unlike all three original films and DOFP, she has no action sequences (that I can recall) and is essentially more of a motivational speaker. This is more in tune with her role in First Class. I know people think that Jennifer Lawrence is skewing the focus of the franchise, but I'd say Mystique's level of involvement here was about the same as Cyclops in the first X-Men - a noticeable part of the team, but not the focus.

I also felt that the defeat of Apocalypse like that shouldn't have worked considering what we saw in The Last Stand - what changed? Adamantium or lack thereof?

I worried the Empire image of the X-Men costumed up in the danger room spoiled who survived the film - which it bloody did! - but at least Psylocke has room to reappear which seems likely the intent based on her expression in her final shot. I know she's one of the silent henchman type characters here, but there's room to do a lot more with Psylocke.

Speaking of which - the X-Men films have been fairly liberal in killing off named characters - something that's got them into bother - but this one seems surprisingly light considering the name of the film? Apocalypse seemed to get a bit irked when Caliban was expressing too much interest in money and Apocalypse did his speil about false idols and calling him weak - I was surprised he didn't actually do anything and the scene cut to the next one. The film just didn't feel like it had a high threat level. The Sydney Opera House is the only thing that reminded me that the wider world was in danger and it wasn't just our merry band of mutants on a rescue mission, despite all of the speeches Apocalypse gave. Quote of the day goes to the Independence Day trailer in front of it "They do like to get the landmarks..."

I love the Proteus hint. I didn't grasp it until it was pointed out to me after the film and now it seems glorious. If the next one is set in the 90s as Simon Kinberg said in interview, that's surely got to have Proteus setup as the villain. I believe they said Moira's son was at least six in this film, and if they jump a decade again then 16 would be the right age to explore his story.

Excited about the Essex Corp tease! Would put money on Richard E Grant's unconfirmed Wolverine 3 role being Mr Sinister (or more than likely just 'Nathaniel Essex' to avoid the goofiness)

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I have to wait to see it before I can read the second part of your post, but thanks for the first part.

Please give your rankings of the nine films so far, so I can see how they compare to mine (of the eight I've seen, anyway).

You're welcome
My ranking for the first nine:

1) X-Men: Days of Future Past
2) X2: X-Men United
3) X-Men: First Class
4) Deadpool
5) The Wolverine
6) X-Men
7) X-Men: Apocalypse
8) X-Men: The Last Stand
9) X-Men Origins: Wolverine

I've thought about this more than I should over the last few years - The Wolverine and X-Men switch a lot every time I rewatch one of them, but the others are fairly locked for me. I hope that's useful!

I wonder how far down the rabbit hole is too far, or if there even is a too far?

This is the 9th movie in the X-Men series, I believe I have seen 2 1/2 of them. It is far beyond the trilogy format. We are doing Elm Street and Friday the 13th and Harry Potter without the benefit of a final book. Only with the first two mostly wacky series at least you could walk in on one film and have a complete story without trying very hard to connect the last one.

Not so with X-Men or all the Marvel Avengers or now even the DC universe. I'm sure that was an awesome review, but I have no idea what it meant because I was not committed to all the other films, never was a fanboy and have lost the thread. Nor would I want to go back and watch all the movies just to see this latest edition. See once they do lose a viewer, it's over for the series.

It may well be my minority opinion, but I am getting tired of the annual franchise hits that are running on four and five different titles now. I honestly don't know who has the ambition to keep up with more than one. I can't even do that.

Oh, yeah, I would say this one has an awful lot of reference to X-Men: First Class in it. To the point it's very noticeable. It's definitely for the benefit of people who haven't seen that one. They illustrate the connection quite a lot verbally and through recycled footage from First Class numerous times. The bird's eye shot of Oxford in one of the Apocalypse trailers is particularly bizarre because neither the city nor university has any involvement in this film whatsoever, and again comes from First Class.

I think the serialisation isn't so bad, people devote a lot more time to TV It's fairly apt for comic adaptations too. I sometimes wonder how I devoted 121.5 hours to LOST. This is still a lot less time investment, and they're released slow enough for easy catch up!

If you did all of Lost, you can stick with anything.

I suspect there's a spot in Hell that just plays Lost reruns for eternity.

Well, there was a sort of soft reboot that happened here, and they used time-traveling plots from the comics to do it, but the end result is that even though Wolverine is in all of these, they aren't the same franchises, and Deadpool is totally its own, even though there were a couple of X-Men in there.

X1 through 3 are one franchise, the current one with its part 3 due to bow next week is another, and Wolverine is still another, set to culminate with Hugh Jackman in the role in the upcoming "Old Man Logan".

So, really, it'll end up being three related, yet separate trilogies once the next Wolvie is out.
The original X-men trilogy started out well but ended weekly (thanks in part to Singer leaving the director's chair for his own ill-fated try at Superman and a hack assuming his spot in the chair).
Looks like the Wolvie trilogy (assuming Old Man Logan is good, and it is a good story in the comics) started out weakly and could be ending strong.
Looks like, according to RWN here, that the new trilogy started out well and finishes decently, but not as well as it could've have.

As for his rankings, they look good to me, so I'm thinking I'll be placing Apocalypse somewhere in that bottom trio, too (but I'll still definitely be seeing it, and as long as its better than Origins and Last Stand, I won't be demanding my money back, haha).

See I don't think this is actually the end, I would assume they'll want to do more with the new younger cast now that they've reintroduced these major characters and I'm sure they'll be on multi picture contracts too. I can picture this being a series of five prequel-ish films by the time it ends - the original trilogy is set in the mid-00s so if they jump a decade between films, the fifth one would take them to the early-00s and just before the ages the original actors were playing, so that seems to fit, and just have the original cast from any film set in the 00s onwards. I guess some contracts would need renegotiating. But I think this film might end up being a 'mid point' in the prequel series.

I think the people who were in the first 3 would be getting a giant raise to do anymore, which is why so many of these franchises end after 3 films, because the studios don't want to pony up (exceptions: Depp in Pirates, Downey at Marvel, and Damon in Bourne).

But sure, the youngsters are ready to go for their own batch of movie, so 5 seems about right. It'll be interesting to see if they can get Jennifer Lawrence for any more.

The producers have already said that the next film will take place in the 90's, so the series is going to continue. Also, they mentioned that with the events of Days of Future Past, the timeline has been altered, so they aren't bound by the timeline set forth in the first trilogy which frees them up to change things that weren't working.

I think there's still some ambiguity as to whether New Mutants is the 90s entry, but I hope that one's set in present day and it's indeed a follow up to Apocalypse in the 90s. James McAvoy and Jennifer Lawrence were on Graham Norton the week before last, or I think it was shown yesterday in the USA, but the way they reacted when asked if they'll be back for more seemed like they already know the answer to that, and I think Jennifer Lawrence even came close to saying it until McAvoy closed the conversation down - she turned to him and said something along the lines of "It doesn't even matter if we tell them--" before he gave the usual diplomatic 'schedules, script and money' response. They're also amazingly charismatic people, it was a fun episode to watch and I don't usually like chat shows.

I know the original trilogy doesn't have much bearing anymore story-wise, but I would prefer they kept the actors separate and minimise any occasion where the new cast play older characters than we've seen previous actors in, if not for the sake of Days of Future Past's canon in the new timeline not being diminished. A 20th century and a 21st century division on actors if you will. I think Jean and Xavier's ages in X-Men: Apocalypse already contradict that flashback scene from The Last Stand, and Stryker with Origins, but oh well.

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I think when they saved Bollivar Trask at the end of "Days of Future Past", that altered the future. Remember? Jean and Cyclops were alive again, to Wolverine's great surprise, so the original trilogy would've been wiped away, right?

Yep - sorry, I'm going to blame posting late at night and the erroneous use of the word 'prequel' for my point maybe being jarbled in my two previous posts - I meant the canon of the concluding DOFP mansion sequence within the new timeline - it was just so incredibly satisfying to see that particular cast in the franchise again that I'd personally hope the younger actors never play contemporary modern day versions of the characters, and remain solely in period settings, so that division of actors in the franchise always remains consistent (as with Patrick Stewart's Xavier returning in Wolverine 3) which was what all my talk of bringing the new cast to the early 00s and no further was about - it was only meant to be a quick remark

I liked how they brought John Slattery back to play Howard Stark in Ant-Man even though they could've just aged Dominic Cooper up the same way they did with Hayley Atwell, only for Dominic Cooper to then play the role in Agent Carter S2, and then John Slattery in Civil War. I hope the X-Men series remains similar.

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Bought the Blu-Ray & DVD & Digital HD version from Target that included the exclusive 1983 X-Men Yearbook this week. The Yearbook is a cool idea for a Blu-Ray & DVD holder.

quote:

Originally posted by Heroes For Hire:
Bought the Blu-Ray & DVD & Digital HD version from Target that included the exclusive 1983 X-Men Yearbook this week. The Yearbook is a cool idea for a Blu-Ray & DVD holder.

Not out in the UK until 7th November

I've only seen most of these movies but "Apocalypse" ranks at the bottom for me. It was actually boring in parts.

I would have to say that "First Class" was the most fun to watch. There was that noticeable misunderstanding that the go-go look was in style at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) when it more of a late 60's-early 70's thing and some people complained about that. I just thought it was funny that someone must have known that but liked the mix. Also, it was cool that that villain had his own submarine - a childhood dream of mine.

quote:

Originally posted by rwn410:
You're welcome
My ranking for the first nine:

1) X-Men: Days of Future Past
2) X2: X-Men United
3) X-Men: First Class
4) Deadpool
5) The Wolverine
6) X-Men
7) X-Men: Apocalypse
8) X-Men: The Last Stand
9) X-Men Origins: Wolverine

I've thought about this more than I should over the last few years - The Wolverine and X-Men switch a lot every time I rewatch one of them, but the others are fairly locked for me. I hope that's useful!