The Wolverine

Written at the time of the film's release...

Ronin on Empty
or
The SNIKT Hits the Japanese Fan

The last Wolverine movie—which was also the only entry in the "X-Men: Origins" series—was not very good. But, like Wolverine healing from his wounds and coming back whole, hope springs eternal like adamantium claws, and there were enough interesting aspects to The Wolverine that one wondered if this time they might have got it right. They were basing it on the Chris Claremont/Frank Miller mini-series from way, way back, and the director is James Mangold, who did Cop Land and Walk the Line. I mean he's no Darren Aronofsky (who he replaced on the project), but maybe, just maybe...

It tries very hard.

The script went through the hands of many writers, some of them quite accomplished—Christopher McQuarrie, Scott Frank—and Mark Bomback, who wrote Unstoppable and Live Free or Die Hard. It retains some of the Claremont-Miller story, like the beginning with a self-exiled Wolverine living in the mountains, and his dealings with a bear and its careless hunter, but abandons most of it, causing it to suffer from serious story-bloat. There are echoes of the original throughout—a mention of a bullet-train from the story turns into a full-fledged battle on the top of one in this—but instead of echoes, we have the roar of something almost wholly new, adding other elements and characters from other stories in the canon (thankfully limited to this world). For example, it gives us a back-story of how Logan (Hugh Jackman) first met the man he will be dealing with in the movie—Yashida (Ken Yamamura in these scenes, then aging to Hal Yamanouchi).It's World War II, and he's in a Japanese prisoner of war camp, conveniently close to the city of Nagasaki, just when the second atomic bomb is dropped. Logan shields the POW guard from the effects of the blast that crisps Logan, but, no worries, he heals from the effects in five minutes, although very painfully.

Fast forward. When we find Logan in the present, he is haunted by nightmares of his dead love Jean Grey (Famke Janssen). As she died in the egregiously terrible X-Men: The Last Stand, I know exactly how he feels—I'm still bitter about how they atomized the Scott Summers/Jean Grey relationship in that movie. While he's attending to the bear hunter in the bar, he's confronted with the pint-sized assassin Yukio (Rila Fukusima), who, in her stealth ninja style has electric red hair. Fascinating. She is in the employ of Yashida, who requests the man who saved his life at Nagasaki to do him a service before his death.* That would be in the form of relinquishing his mutant-powers to him. Makes sense—he's dying and wants to live forever, while Logan is living forever and hates it. Nobody's happy, so why don't we switch each other's green grass. Well, despite his oft-professed existential pain, the mutant either has a change of heart or he just knows how to position it and says that he would never curse someone with his everlasting powers, so, thanks but no thanks.  

Easy for him to say, he's living forever.

Yeah, I know Frank Miller likes it, but I never "bought" the
"Claws-stops-samurai sword" variation of Rock/Scissors/Paper.

Yashida dies (thanks, Wolverine!), distressing his family, including daughter Mariko (Tao Okamoto) who is attacked and threatened with kidnapping at her father's very public funeral.  So much for stealth.  At this point, it becomes a chase between the forces trying to kidnap Mariko (but who?) and some mysterious forces behind it all. Oh. And fights. And chases. And Logan gets hurt. And fixes himself, because that's what he does, even if it undermines any sort of tension that he actually might get killed.

Why do they usually change the comic-costumes of characters? 

Because they look stupid, that's why!

 

What Claremont and Miller cooked up in their mini-series was okay, if slightly uneventful. But without the Mariko-Logan back-story of the original tale, what Mangold and his writers have done is complicate things...a lot, drag in a standard Marvel villain, Viper (played by Svetlana Khodchenkova) (or Madame Hydra, as she was occasionally known and they dress her up in the customary cut-away latex thing the character always seemed to wear) and basically start from scratch, occasionally waving at the original story.

The whole thing feels convoluted and clunky and only brings some surprises if you've actually read the comic books—standard movie-goers just get the usual twists and turns that they can see coming a mile away. Mangold does try and bring something to the fights, but, with a PG-13 rating expected for the thing, there's only so much slashing that can be done in anything more than a suggestive fashion. As with the other X-men/Wolverine movies, you aren't shown the cleavage that happens when the SNIKT! hits the fan. For all the talk of the character's bad-assery, the violence that his powers implies and the fan-boys want to see will always be ham-strung by the movie ratings system.

Despite Jackman's performance (and he'll always be associated with this role no matter how many musicals he'll do) this one doesn't feel fresh or fun, recycling a lot of material, but more so. That centerpiece fight on top of a bullet-train is the same sort of thing we've seen before—and recently in James Bond, Spider-man and The Lone Ranger—but the same stuff is being done, just faster and less impactful. Despite the constant threat of falling off or de-capitation (for Wolverine, everything will just heal), how can you make a fight on a bullet-train dull?

Well, maybe not so much dull as ludicrous.

Stick around as the credits roll out, though, for a couple of essential appearances—one of which is very surprising—that will lead into X-Men: Days of Future Past, which will attempt to unite the original X-men films with the "First Class" ret-conning to smooth out some of the two series continuity issues.  

Really, does it matter? How about just concentrating on making a better movie, like the First Class formula-blaster was?

Okay, I REALLY don't buy the claws stopping the Silver Samurai's sword.
("The Silver Samurai??")

 
* Wait a second here.  Wolverine saves HIS life at Nagasaki, and pulls him all the way to Japan to do this? I know he's an international crime-lord and all, but that's really against any "pay-back" principle or criminal code of conduct I've ever heard of. "You saved my life, so to repay you, I'm going to ask you to save it again." Oh. Well!  When you put it THAT way!

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Noooooooo! Written at the time of the film's release....

Shmukt!: Claws for Alarm

   

When the X-Men movies lost its chief stylist Bryan Singer to do Superman Returns it was a double disappointment. X-Men III: The Last Stand was the most expensive movie ever made—at the time), and looked terrible. Top-heavy with stars that not only bloated the budget but capsized the script to fulfill their demands, it brought the X-series to a sad ending, x-hausted, x-cessive, and x-cremental (while Superman Returns felt like going to The Church of Kal-El and Klan).

 

Time to re-boot, so here we have, rising as he always does from his own ashes, "Wolverine Begins" with Hugh Jackman reprising his break-out role. It's a smart move. Jackman was "the" star of the "X-men" movies and after the first, they were tailored for him, like his strategically ripped wife-beaters. One is hard-pressed to think of another movie where he is used so effectively (and succeeded at the box-office).

But this is a curious re-boot. At a time when most super-hero movies are dusting off the cliches, X-Men Origins: Wolverine (the title says it all) coats itself in the dust and the muck and the mire and revels in it. For instance: there is not one, but two scenes where Jim Logan (Jackman) looks up at a conveniently omniscient overhead camera and yells his frustration to the skies and his x-communicating God.

 

Are you kidding me? Hasn't that shot been decommissioned after all the easy laughs it's garnered on "The Daily Show?"**

It has. But nobody told director Gavin Hood (Rendition). He seems unconcerned about cliches or recycled material (or "sell-past" dates), as the movie lurches like lead villain Sabretooth (Liev Schreiber, but it was Tyler Mane in the original where they didn't know each other) bounding from one bad idea to the next, linked as they are by that most mainstream of transitions—the one-to-one dissolve. We get a lot of them in the Main Title. After the Bruce-Wayne-Meets-Oedipus childhood trauma opening, Hood shows the brothers Logan fighting in war after war, guns fading into guns and helmets into helmets. It's quite "artily" if unimaginatively done,* but Hood keeps using it until you start looking for the detail he might use in the next transition. Flames? Ocean waves? How about a dusk to dawn transition? That hasn't been done since...well, since I started writing this.

A lot of the problem is that Marvel—"The House of Ideas," as it likes to trumpet—has culled so much from other stories that the whole Wolverine opus reads like a Reader's Digest Omnibus of Comic Literature. Logan gets recruited to join a Dirty X-Dozen black-ops unit, then declares himself "Wolverine no more" and becomes a lumberjack (and that's okay) until his school-teacher gal-pal is killed, and he swears revenge (cue the overhead camera and the underhanded cliche). 

He then submits to a "Frankenstein" experiment under the control of his former superior Stryker (Danny Huston, prequeling for Brian Cox), that coats his skeleton with indestructible adamantium. He escapes Stryker, and hides out with an old farm couple, the Kent's...er, no, the Hudson's, before being attacked—again—and hooking up with Gambit (Taylor Kitsch) for a full assault on the villain's headquarters, where like Spartacus, he leads a "mutie" revolt, that includes a young Scott Summers (Tim Pocock, looking like Ben Stiller rather than James Marsden). 

Ryan Reynolds' first depiction of Deadpool, an event which he never forgot and has inspired countless jokes about Hugh Jackman, as well as a very popular larky film about the character—...oh, and Deadpool 2.

 

There are lots of Marvel folk appearing (briefly): Bolt, Deadpool, The Blob, Agent Zero, and Kestrel. The inconsistency with their comic-book counter-parts will drive some fan-boys nuts (not to mention Wolverine's brylcreemed pompadour from the first two films is gone, too). This fan-boy had trouble with the fights, all based on other movies: the war action from Saving Private Ryan (by way of Crank), another based on John Woo's hyper-dramatics and aerodynamics, and another, straight out of the "Star Wars" prequels. 

So much recycled material to so little effect. Using the character's own onomatopoeia, it's ten pounds of snikt!TM in a five pound bag.  

"C'mere, Kid. Got a lousy movie to show ya!"

* If you ever want to see it done to death, check out Danny DeVito's direction of Hoffa. 

** A word of explanation from 2021: This refers to "The Daily Show" when Jon Stewart was hosting it...he'd make frequent use of an overhead shot (in moments of duress) and scream to the heavens "Noooooooooooooo!" Often they'd put a reverberating echo on it (That's how it SHOULD be done!)

*** Spoiler Alert: Good place to put spoilers, isn't it? In case you think you're missing something, you're not. There's a cameo by Professor X (Patrick Stewart reprising his role), although why is Scott (Cyclops) the only guy X was reaching out to?—seems he could have contacted all the escaping mutants (because it would have killed the suspense is why), and the by-now standard "Marvel Tag" at the end of the credits is no big deal—Wolverine at a bar: "Drinking to forget?" "No. Drinking to remember." Supposedly, there are three others. If they're all that "good," don't bother collecting them all.

Dark PhoeniX

Jean Therapy
or
Screwing up "The Dark Phoenix Saga", Part DeuX

"The Dark Phoenix Saga" (done in two parts—"The Uncanny X-Men" Issues 101-108 and "The Uncanny X-Men" Issues 129-138) is considered to be THE great story of the Chris Claremont/John Byrne run of the "X-Men" comics, when the series was at its apex, not only in terms of sales but also creativity. It seems inevitable that if you're going to do something with "The X-Men" (in whatever media), you're going to get around to do a version of that particular story, so dominant is it in the canon. How could one resist? It's simple, it's tragic, and it involves that gut-buster of the comics field—killing off a principal character, in this case, the character of Jean Grey, considered the heart and soul of the X-men (as well as the love of the group's leader, Scott Summers, aka Cyclops).*

Well, (as they say in Monty Python) she "got better."

But, the run was controversial and revered. Just that—point of fact—despite its high regard in fan circles, the story is not that great. Claremont was playing with issues of god-like powers and how such abilities can corrupt the weak**—not a big revelation there (although, truth to tell, i get the sneaking suspicion that not many voters are familiar with it). What made the story interesting came from editorial interference. At one point ("The Uncanny X-Men #135), Grey, in deep space in her Phoenix state, decides to recharge her depleted powers by snuffing out a distant sun, thus wiping out billions of beings—the D'bari (remember it, it'll show up later)—in another solar system. She suffered no consequences. Claremont seemed okay with that. But, then Marvel Editor-in-Chief Jim Shooter found the idea abhorrent—comparing it to Hitler going unpunished for the Holocaust. It was Shooter's insistence that Jean Grey die, which was dramatized as an act of self-sacrifice. It terminally limited what Claremont could do with such a conflicted character (you gotta keep your creative options open), but it allowed for some rough justice and a kind of penance, balancing the moral scales just a smidge'. But, it tinkered with the mythological (which, really, all superhero stories do, to a point) in an extremely obvious and melodramatic fashion. Fan-boys love that stuff.

The first X-Men movie series—the one with Hugh Jackman's Wolverine—rushed into the story, making it cross between X-Men 2: X-Men United and X-Men 3: The Last Stand. But, it did so in a clumsy and quite heretical way; in The Last Stand, Grey's Phoenix (played by Famke Janssen) atomizes her lover Scott Summers—aka Cyclops (James Marsden)—in one of her first acts, giving one of the comic's major characters extremely short-shrift,*** then compounding it by having her disintegrate Professor X (Patrick Stewart) as well. This allowed series star Jackman to be the one X-Person who could defeat her (as he had regenerative healing powers, which was fine as long as she disintegrated him REAL SLOW—if she just "blowed him up real good" that would have been less of a conceit, and one HELL of a writer's conundrum to solve). But, then, The Last Stand chose the easy way out in all matters. It was a huge letdown for both fans of the comic and the film series and the response was quite vocal. Also—as The Last Stand was extraordinarily expensive for its time (even by super-budget standards) it was deemed a financial failure, as well as artistic failure to the point where Singer's "return" X-Men movie, X-Men: Days of Future Past "x'd" it out of existence.

I wish I could say that Dark Phoenix does a better job of it with the "First Class" X-Men, but it does not, although its path is not as radical. There were issues during filming—most of the cast and crew admit that the third act, involving an elaborate trains sequence, replaced an earlier more cosmic resolution (supposedly because preview audiences found it too similar to Captain Marvel's ending, although this is a guess as Marvel is being mum about it). Who knows if it would have been better? But, it doesn't solve the main problem—timing.

The character of Jean Grey (as portrayed by Sophie Turner, who does great work with what she can) was introduced in X-Men: Apocalypse and she had barely enough screen-time for the character to generate any emotional stakes with the audience. This film tries—putting a young Jean Grey into a life-shattering traumatic event (interestingly, the same one as turned Dr. Sivana to the "Dark Side" in Shazam! (I guess Marvel doesn't watch too many DCU movies—they should, if only to see what not to do).

Cut to the efforts of Professor Xavier (James McAvoy) to take on guardianship—and care-taking—of the young Jean at the Xavier School for Gifted Children, where he provides a mental block band-aid to keep Jean from going down a dark path. Unfortunately, he's the one who induces the event that pushes her over the edge. At the notification of the President—the government trusts the X-Men now?—the core team—Beast (Nicholas Hoult), Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee), Quicksilver (Evan Peters), Cyclops (Tye Sheridan) and Jean are sent to space ("raise your hands if...") to rescue the crew of the space shuttle Endeavour from a virulent energy source (fulfilling the classic Marvel trope—"I dunno what it is, but it sure is big"). Nightcrawler *BAMFS* over to rescue the crew, but manages to leave Jean on the shuttle where her efforts to keep the vehicle together exposes her to the energy's attack, which she absorbs. It dramatically increases her psycho-kinesis, but puts the emphasis on the "psycho" part by breaking the mental block Prof. X had established.

Pretty soon, she's having to deal with the awesome powers she possesses, the inhibitions it dispels and the fact that she enjoys it to a destructive degree. There is a lot of room to snark that the plot is a cautionary tale about giving a woman to much power, which is quite the opposite of the line Marvel should take especially given its Captain Marvel film and the too-brief tip of the cowl to super-women in Avengers: Endgame.

The results are damaging to the X-Men—one prominent A-lister is killed—and it results in all the mutants taking sides—Xavier's group on one side trying to get Jean back to school to try to mute her instincts, and the group headed by Magneto (Michael Fassbender) and Beast to try to eliminate her. Both groups are challenged by the shape-shifting D'bari (ah, reader, you made it this far!) led by the power-hungry Vuk (Jessica Chastain, who shoves portraying intelligence aside for a serene lizardish entitlement), who have been tracking the Phoenix Energy and want to suck it out of Jean for themselves...

Attack in New York. Attack on the mutant-train (which is quite dynamic and well-realized, actually). But, again, we've spent more time with Evil Jean than with the sympathetic one. The consequences of the actions don't resonate and seem less than a tragedy than a sensible outcome to avert disaster. Timing. 

Another X-Men movie with Turner's Grey might have helped, but 20th Century Fox (which has the movie rights to the characters) wanted to wrap up this version of X-men (2.0?) so that it could be "re-imagined" under the auspices of their new Masters, Disney-Marvel. And so the potential for a good film is once again sacrificed for corporate interests. As they used to say on "The Bullwinkle Show," "That trick never works."

You can bet they'll try it again for a third time (unless the "re-boot" tanks) because it's not like there are a lot of other X-Men stories to tell. How many times have we seen Krypton explode and Bruce Wayne's parents get shot? Maybe "re-boot" and "re-imagining" shouldn't be the terms used but "recycling," instead. Send the old stuff to the burn-bin and start anew?

Seems appropriate. Phoenix's may rise. But, first there have to be a lot of ashes.

* No one dies in comics. Not really. And especially in the Marvel Universe ("The House of Ideas"). In 1986, writer Kurt Busiek and Bob Layton revived the character as part of their team in "X-Factor" with the first issue.

** File under: "Power corrupts; Absolute power corrupts absolutely." You can file it, but it'll probably take you a year to find it again, because a lot of people do that one. I find it...thought-provoking that the director so dominant in bringing most of the X-Men movies to the screen, director Bryan Singer—who could learn a thing or two about the abuse of power—did not direct the two "Phoenix" films.

*** Lord knows why, probably to shock the expectations of those familiar with the original, in much the same way that Stanley Kubrick in The Shining had Jack Nicholson's Jack Torrence kill the guy who, in Stephen King's book, ultimately saves the Torrence family, giving more power to the wife and son to triumph and save themselves, but also to shock the hell out of the complacent fans. Worked great. With Cyclops, not so much, although one could make an argument that she had to kill her former lover to "detach" herself from her Jean Grey past. Pfft.

Rockin' roller-blades, it's Dazzler! (Marvel's dumbest superhero)

Logan

Just Claws
or
That Old Man Logan...He Just Keeps "Shnikting" Along...

The X-Men series of films have had their good and bad editions, while the off-shoots of the most popular character from the comics and the films—Hugh Jackman's Wolverine—haven't had a really good film at all.

Until now.

Better late than never, I say, and it's extremely fortunate in that Jackman has stated Logan is his last appearance as Wolverine (yeah, we'll see...never say never). What is ironic is that, in this last Wolverine film, the best thing about it is that it strays from X-Men lore and comes up with a new concept that takes risks, if only because there is no continuity that needs to be saved and no sequel that degrades the stakes the character must overcome by ensuring his return. Logan treads No-X-Man's Land and that territory bears no marks of previous vehicles and feels as entirely fresh as an open road. 

The year is 2029 and all the X-Men are dead. No mutants have appeared in their wake. Their evolutionary pace has been stilled. John Howlett (Jackman) is making his way through life as a limousine driver-for-hire. He's older and not much wiser, suffering now from years of wounds as his healing powers are starting to shut down, while the adamantium lacing his bones is slowly killing him and he keeps himself going through the pain with pills and booze. His fares are enough to allow him to purchase special drugs from a surreptitious hospital contact.* But, they're not for him. They're for a special patient being secreted in Mexico.

That patient is Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart), former head of the Xavier School for Gifted Children. Elderly now, and suffering from dementia, the old Professor X needs to be heavily sedated, or his mental powers, now erratic, will cause seizures that will paralyze everyone in a very large area surrounding him. One such seizure killed the last remaining X-Men and Xavier is wracked by guilt and depression. He is kept medicated and watched over by Caliban (Stephen Merchant), an albino mutant-tracker, who must stay out of the sun or face debilitating burns.

But, Wolverine is being triangulated: first, he is being sought out by a nurse named Gabriela (Elizabeth Rodriguez), who has with her a young girl named Laura (Dafne Keen)—Gabriela wants to hire Logan to take them to Canada where a secret facility named "Eden" can protect them; the second is Donald Pierce (Boyd Holbrook), a "modified" security agent for an organization named "Alkili Transigen" who is also looking for Gabriela, if only to find Laura, and knows that Logan has been contacted by her. He also seems to know that Professor X is in Mexico and has a great interest in him, as well.

Before you know it, Gabriela is dead, and all parties are in Mexico duking it out, and it is only then that the truth about Laura is known—she is a mutant, raised in the facility of Alkili Transigen to create a new line of weaponized "muties" bred from the ones who have gone before, and she has been cloned from a very specific DNA strain—Logan's. She has the healing powers and the claws, but being female, has a bit more—as in nature, the claws in her hands are for attack, but the ones in her feet, are for defense. Laura, designated "X-23," is a fighting machine, and her skills are ferocious and often devious.

A prolonged attack in Mexico sets the mutants on the run, ostensibly to Canada, but, for the short term, out of the way of Pierce and Transigen's gang of bio-mechanically enhanced "Rievers." But, they're never too far away, having captured Caliban and torturing him to track the fugitives. At the same time, Logan the loner must learn to deal with the possibility of being a reluctant hero for the ones under his charge, something he resists for all the death and destruction in his wake; as he tells Laura, "Bad shit happens to people I care about" "Then I'll be fine," is her aware reply..

It is the best of the Wolverine films, and it might be the best of the X-Men films (they've all blurred in my head these days). Since their inception (X-ception?), Marvel's mutant movies have been plagued by a fuzziness that has more to do with the inability to focus on any one member or conflict because the things are stacked from fade-in to fade-out with too many characters all demanding some amount of screen-time (you can see the same thing happening with the Avengers line of films, only two in). Here, Logan doesn't spend the whole movie ignoring the platitudes of dozens of pep-talkers, it's just him being "Mad Max" wrestling with his own conscience to get in the fight rather than being lectured to, constantly. Just as sure as the adamantium inside is killing him, he's shredding himself internally over his reluctance to commit.

Perhaps taking some courage from the box-office of Deadpool (there is a short, goofy interlude featuring that character pre-film), Logan is rated R—and a hard R—for violence and pervasive shnikting.** It is a problem with the X-Men films—and Wolverine in particular—that this most popular character is also the most violent, slashing, carving, dicing, gashing, eviscerating, and disembowling anything that comes across his path. The comics get away with it by showing the side of the victim that isn't being shredded or by hiding it in a swing-arc. The movies get away with it by keeping the action off-frame or (dare I say it?) "cutting away," thus (dare I say it again?) "under-cutting" the character and his ginzu-power. Logan's Wolverine cuts off hands, heads, guts people, rams his claws into eyes, foreheads and delivers one nasty upper-cut. 

"One nasty uppercut." They should have named him "Pierce"

...and curses like a sailor with a limited vocabulary. But, it's the surgeries that earned the rating. It lends the movie and the character a bit more desperation than we've seen previously and, in so doing, raises the stakes (ouch...can't get away from the puns) of the film.

Director James Mangold did the last unimpressive 'Wolverine-in-Japan" film which managed to not bring to mind any of the strong iconography of the comics in that setting. Here, however, telling a more personal story, with a much-weakened character and with less X-ephemera, that works far better than any previous attempts. And he ends it with a late, craggy Johnny Cash song (not "Hurt" as in the trailers—Mangold directed Walk the Line, the very good Cash bio-pic, by the way) that couldn't be more apt as a coda. Logan is tough and tender, and finally, does the character some justice, and makes the task of replacing Jackman a little bit more daunting. Good on them.

* And, seemingly, an endless supply of gasoline. That limo gets a lot of miles on it, and it's mileage must be incredible, as we never, ever see Logan fill the tank.

** I know, it's supposed to be "SNIKT!" but I was a sound-designer, dude, and when those claws go through wolverine's knuckle skin, it's going to make a "sch" sound so I think it's "SHNIKT!"

X-Men: Apocalypse

Deus X Menschina 
or
Apocalypse Then and Now (I Am Third)

At one point in X-Men: Apocalypse,* young mutants Scott Summers, Jean Grey, and Kurt Wagner are seen out doing "teen" things and are coming out of a theater showing Return of the Jedi. Jean Grey has the line "Let's all just agree that the third film in a trilogy is always the worst."

Cute line. Very meta. The third of the X-Men films—the one not directed by Bryan Singer (who directs this one) was indeed the worst film of the series. That line made me laugh, but I also thought it was a bit snarky. And premature. And a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The problem is when you point out something's flaws most of the fingers are pointing back at you, even if your mutant hand only has three fingers.

After all, this is the third film in this current incarnation of the X-Men franchise (2.0 on this one) and although we might not all agree, it is the worst film of this trilogy.

Not that it's bad or incompetent. Director Bryan Singer has done four of the six films and is quite gifted (he keeps coming back to the X-Men franchise because his ambitious, non-genre films don't quite do the business)—in fact, he's so talented that he's managed to do so many of the films of this franchise without seeming to go stale. Of course, he's helped by the voluminous story-lines and characters of Marvel's diverse Mutant-line, and that, after just three films, the series went through its first re-boot, going back to the past to mine history stories of the characters already established in the first X-Men film back at the turn of the century.

Magneto's mad at mankind again. Jeez......He's like an old man with a property line.

The break-out star of that film was Hugh Jackman, who caught a lucky break when he was cast last-minute to replace Dougray Scott, who couldn't get out of his Mission: Impossible II schedule (John Woo was running a bit late). The series then turned into "Wolverine and Some X-Men" and the swarthy, schnikting Canadian went on to his own (muddled) film series, with returns to his adamantium roots.

And because you can't make an X-Man movie without Hugh Jackman...

It fell to director Matthew Vaughn to re-invent and recast the "X-Men" films with the well-done X-Men: First Class film, which showed you could make an interesting X-Men film without Wolverine, which allowed Singer to come pack to the franchise and bridge the new X-Men with a final bow from the old cast and move forward with tales of the "lost years" of the group before its 2000 debut. The series now serves the function of filling in the holes of the group's history puzzle, the cinematic equivalent of putty.

Havoc gets something off his chest

Given that, there's not much the series can do, and so the latest presents an "Untold Tale of the X-Men" digging up a story of the original mutant from Egyptian times, a priest (Oscar Isaac), known as Apocalypse, with four mutant acolytes, who has found a way to transfer his life energy into a new host to become, for all purposes, immortal. At the point of transfer, he is buried in his temple (at the machinations of some rebellious Nile-lists) and imprisoned for hundreds of years (despite the powers he supposedly possesses) until he is released during the Reagan years to try to re-establish his world-wide rule.  Lucky for him, such a being as Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) exists that he might be able to achieve mental control over the entire human populace.

You can tell the bad guys from the good guys in the X-Men movies by a simple visual representation:
The bad guys make dramatic entrances with low camera angles
The good guys just sort of amble on-set.

His first step is to establish his "four horsemen" which he does by accentuating the powers of mutants Angel (Ben Hardy), Ororo (or as she's called "Storm," now played by Alexandra Shipp), Psylocke (Olivia Munn), and Magneto (Michael Fassbender), who is once again polarized against mankind for one more crime against him. Magneto seems to attract bad human behavior as well as metal.

"Meanwhile," back at Xavier's School for Gifted (and Callowly Attractive) Students, they're picking up new recruits: Havoc (Lucas Till) brings in his brother Scott (Tye Sheridan) who has begun to shoot destructo-beams from his eyes (you know those teenage hormones); Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) has rescued a fellow blue mutant named Kurt Wagner (Kodi Smit McPhee), Nightcrawler, a devil-tailed transporter (*BAMF!*) from a German mutant fight-club; Quicksilver (Evan Peters)—who must have grown into the Russian accent he had in Age of Ultron—runs in just in time to have an extended super-speed demonstration when the School is attacked (again—"once every two years" as they said in Deadpool).

And then there's little Jean Grey (Sophie Turner), the Princess Elsa of the X-Men (who seems to be preparing to star in a Disney musical called "Flamin'"), who is reluctant to give full throttle to her powers (and since they're bringing it up, you know that it won't be long before she lets "it" go). When Xavier is abducted from the School (Hey! Ally Sheedy teaches there! Where's Judd Nelson?) by Apocalypse (after hacking into his brain to launch all of Earth's nuclear missiles into space—Hey, thanks, Apocalypse!), he is transported to Cairo, while the Egyptian King uses Havoc to destroy the X-Mansion—cue Quicksilver for the rescue.

While the students are standing around moping about the school being destroyed, not thinking about how they're super-powered so they might (ya know), clear some debris, then eventually make a trip to Home Depot to buy some cement for a foundation or something (even an impromptu frisbee game might be appropriate instead of just hanging around doing nothing..."mutant kids these days"), Col. William Stryker shows up in a Huey and kidnaps (let's see) Beast, Raven, Quicksilver...and non mutant CIA agent Moira McTaggart (Rose Byrne), either because he knows of them, or they're the ones who seem to have the least lethargy of the mutant lawn ornaments. Cyclops, Phoenix, and Nightcrawler go off in hot pursuit (*BAMF!*)

"Meanwhile," back in Egypt, Magneto is convinced to start building Apoc's city and temple from all the metal building materials in the world, causing world-wide destruction (evidently Singer didn't get the memo about extensive casualties in super-hero movies and to stage these things AWAY from civilization!). Once his temple is constructed, he intends to take over Xavier's body in order to be able to have control over EVERY MUTANT IN THE WORLD...In the world...in the world.

To what end is hard to fathom besides absolute power for absolute power's sake...(not unlike the current presidential campaign). But, Apoc's determined to do it, and so once the Phoenix/Cyclops/Nightcrawler team rescue the Mystique/Beast/Quicksilver/CIA gal team from Stryker—and prompt a Wolverine cameo by releasing Weapon X from Stryker's mutant experimentation facility (check off the X-Men Origin: Wolverine gap from Singer's list**), all the X-ers go to Egypt to have the final showdown so they can end the movie, while the countdown ticks as Apocalypse does his "katra" transference to Professor Xavier—a process that is so elaborate and time-consuming that it provides that much more time for it to stop.

Can't we just throw a SWITCH or something?

The fight is pretty perfunctory, mutie e mutie, where folks get dirty, but that's about it, so you can be assured that the next movie will be just as crowded (especially considering that the contracts for Lawrence, Fassbender and McAvoy are up with this film). Opponents are paired up, without much cross-fighting, ala Civil War, so this movie has the appearance of being behind the curve despite it being in production simultaneously—it's just that the Roussos decided they'd do everything CGI rather than green-screen like Singer does...probably because they were more interested in a really cool battle royale than identifying the participants.

The Apocalypse group all make big dramatic entrances, and the rookies have to find their courage, which they do the closer the near-misses come, and, as these things go, they find that they are most effective if they put their differences aside and work together, but they have to be convinced to do that (like they do every movie). This is usually where the X-Men movies cheat a bit by making the motivations as simple as "you don't HAVE to do this..." (the conversation I usually have with myself before going to an X-Men movie). The transitions are a little quick and convenient, but when you've got people who have mental powers, I guess it's a bit easier. Evidently Professor X wanted me to spend my money. Jerk.

Dramatic entrance: check

The thing is the film is really hollow. There's lots of sturm and drang, but very little of consequence that doesn't involve property damage happens—we're spared seeing the casualties of all that metal extraction (which, although it gets repetitive and numbing to see, not to mention a bit of a cheat) to the point where you think that world is absent of anybody but X-Men. The biggest result of all of this is a new X-team is configured and Professor X loses his hair. Not sure a multi-million dollar movie was needed to mark that event (although I can't remember the last time I saw a movie about male pattern baldness).

Dramatic entrance: check

The most frustrating thing about X-Men: Apocalypse is its seemingly incomprehensible sense of loyalties. In the Marvel Mutant Universe, you are either an activist or a commingler, a radical or an appeaser, Malcolm X or Martin Luther King. Professor X is always among the latters, but the more radical types like Magneto and Mystique are the agitators, until such times, that is, as the movie-makers deem them to be hypocritically antithetical. Convenient to do so, I'm sure, but it sure makes those characters look like flakes, or at the least weak-willed flip-floppers. 

ZAP! "Missed"
ZOTZ! "Missed."

You don't need mutant genes to do that. Heck, that trait is all too human. And I'm sure the convictions will stick as long as the writer-directors aren't in some sort of creative jam. They appear to be in one now, as X-Men: Apocalypse fulfills its own critique of being the worst of its trilogy.

 

* Although I've taken to calling it "X-Men: Isaacalypse."

** Wait, wait, wait...Professor X appeared in that film and he looked like Patrick Stewart. Now, at the same point in time, he looks like James McAvoy. There's a discrepancy in the continuity cameo continuum.