Disclaimer: This is not a review of X-Men Apocalypse (though I’ve tagged it as such for simplicity) but some personal reflections (with SPOILERS).
This movie inverted a common experience of mine with Hollywood action films, which is they start out well but end as formulaic tripe. This film, in my view, started as tripe and ended up pretty good. Once I had accepted the fundamental lameness of the setup, the final showdown was a fairly satisfying mix of the usual X-Men philosophical conundrums, some appropriate character moments, and a good action sequence with appropriate use of the characters’ powers against a plausibly formidable foe. I also generally thought the acting was very good and enjoyed many scenes and lines. And this film had a much better Phoenix setup than X3 and good development of Mystique as an increasingly strong character across the three films. The Apollo Star Trek episode was a perfect fit for the Apocalypse character. None of this, however, wipes out my overall feeling of disappointment.
The Okay
Apocalypse himself: I read a couple of reviews that said he was really wasted as a character. I don’t know the storyline from the comics, but perhaps because I went in with low expectations, I thought he wasn’t bad. He wasn’t great: nothing nuanced or interestingly culturally other, but he wasn’t a cackling villain or a lightweight, and I bought him fine as antagonist, especially given that the real moral struggle is with Magneto, Storm, etc.
The Niggling
Why does nobody age in this franchise? I know our culture worships youth, but in a story explicitly set twenty years after its first installment, which explicitly talked about how Mystique would stay young (and not everyone else), why does no one have one gray hair or look more than five years older?
A smaller niggle—half a compliment really: I love that these movies do different languages. The actors are well rehearsed. But why do they keep dropping into English when they’re surrounded by people who are not primarily English speakers? Maybe we should assume they’re still speaking whatever language and just suspend disbelief, but I’m missing the cues for that. And I found it very weird indeed that Erik would slip out of speaking Polish over his dying family and into English instead of German. If you’re overwhelmed with grief, wouldn’t be you overwhelmed in your native language? And why does Storm ask Apocalypse if he speaks English, get no initial indication that he does, and proceed to talk to him only in English in Egypt?
And speaking of very weird indeed, I find it hard to imagine a Jew who has seen his family murdered in the Holocaust, standing in Auschwitz, being told by some weird guy (even a very powerful guy) that that guy is both Elohim and a bunch of other deities—effectively that he should become an idolater—and not responding with some version of “Um, no.” And I don’t care if Erik is especially religious. How can you come from that cultural vantage point and not have that response? I had that response, and I don’t even belong to any Judeo-Christian religion. Or if one wants to argue that Erik is just mentally fuzzy in that moment, it seems a natural thing to return to later when Erik turns against him. And while I’m smiling as I write this, I do think this is an example of generic action movie writing taking precedence over engagement with characters’ backgrounds, and that’s arguably not a great way to approach referencing the Holocaust, in particular.
The Real Failure of the Franchise
First Class had its problems, but I fannishly adore it as a film that got the emotional pitch just right. Days of Future Past was arguably better written overall but jettisoned a lot of that emotion. Apocalypse managed to be not especially well plotted and put the nail in the coffin of the emotional payoff set up in First Class.
This series has thrown away Magneto’s character development, in particular, and the development of his relationship with Charles (and Raven). Between First Class and Days of Future Past, Erik sat in solitary confinement for ten years. Now, that could have been character defining if it had changed him in any way, driven him bonkers as solitary often does, etc. But it didn’t. It was treated as about as significant as six months in jail. That’s ten years of character development and possible Charles-Erik-Raven development time wasted. Between Days and Apocalypse, Erik buggers off to have family in Poland, wasting another ten years of Charles-Erik-Raven development time.
And while the family scenes, as an isolated bit of storytelling, were fine and well acted, that plot point made no sense for Magneto in his forties. The plotline in the comics, very reasonably, concerns young Magneto, newly free after the Holocaust, trying to build a normal life. It would make a lot of sense for pre-First Class Erik, who doesn’t know there are other mutants and just wants to have a family and pass for someone who’s not a freak. But it makes no sense for someone who has already developed a strong identity as Magneto. Even if you assume that the changed timeline in Days made him want to give peace a chance, I cannot imagine he would do less than Raven toward trying to help mutants. It’s out of character. This is man so driven by the need to belong to his group and defend it that he’ll repeatedly cause mayhem and death to do so. And then, we’re told he turns his back on them and opts for trying to pass as a normal human with a normal human wife? I can’t buy it. And it wasn’t necessary.
Because in this very same story, we’re also told that Quicksilver is Erik’s son. Now, there’s a character with a lot of personality already integrated into the franchise, who doesn’t have to be generically created as the perfect wife-and-daughter who exist for no reason but to be cute and victimized. It would have been easy to set up a scenario where that father-son relationship is revealed, the two of them begin to bond, then Quicksilver gets killed (or seemingly), and Erik is pushed over the edge toward Apocalypse: fewer minor characters, greater cohesion, less wife/kid/victim stereotyping, more in character, and more emotional payoff for a relationship between two people rather than one person and two pieces of cardboard.
The fact that the movie didn’t go there is indicative of my greatest criticism overall: emotional cowardice.
I don’t know if Singer et al. got scolded by the studio after First Class for being “too gay” or “too confusing,” but they sure backed off any emotional resonance for the last two movies. Charles and Erik are the most obvious victims: they had a touching and intense relationship in FC, one good fight scene in Days, and nothing in Apocalypse but a reserved “old friending” and a couple instances of James MacAvoy working hard to give maximum emotional weight to pretty sparse “I know how you feel” lines.
But they’re not the only casualties. Charles and Raven got little emotional oomph, a sort of loose, “It’s nice to see you.” “This was never my home,” as if they’d never actually known each other that well. Erik and Raven ditto: she seemed to care about his welfare as a sort of old friend, but there was no backbone to suggest they’d ever (as it seems) been an item or that his trying to kill her in Days left any lasting emotional mark. Erik and Peter ended up having no development. (From a pure plot perspective, it’s unforgiveable that either Peter or Raven didn’t say he was Erik’s son when that was obviously the easiest way to make him back off destruction for Apocalypse.) Charles and Jean fared better, but here, too, there were missed opportunities for at least one moment of real emotional intensity between the two telepaths. In the scene where they’re joining minds against Apocalypse, for example, they’re rarely even in the same frame. I kept expecting her to touch his head to enhance the connection, and she didn’t.
And this is a consistent thing: no one is allowed to touch anyone, no hugs, nothing, with the exception of Erik and his cardboard family. It’s like everyone has become Rogue without her gloves. And that’s why I wonder if there was scolding for being “too gay/confusing.” Because our society (still? I mean, still?) doesn’t recognize love in relationships that are not conventionally sexual-romantic (still privileging straight) or obviously familial. And mutant relationships often aren’t that simple. People’s lives are disrupted. Children are estranged from parents. Mutants find friends and family where they find them. Charles and Erik, obviously though depressingly in 2016, could be falling afoul of the “too gay” thing. But Charles and Raven may “confuse” people too: they’re like brother and sister, but they’re not biological siblings, so if they are too loving, will it read as creepy and sexual? All the more Charles and Jean. She is like his daughter, but she is not his daughter, so if they are too loving, will it read as creepy and sexual? Erik and Raven were presumably some sort of het pairing after FC, but they never for long or very conventionally, so if they appear too loving/intense/invested, will it just confuse the audience into thinking they’re supposed to be the big lovers of the series, undercut Raven’s independence perhaps?
Or maybe that’s not it at all. But that’s the only reason I can come up with for the Singer team’s failure to follow through with the fascinating and palpable range of atypical emotional resonances it set up in FC. It’s clear they know how to do it. They just spent two movies not doing it.
For all that, to end on a happy note, I enjoyed the movie. I really did—in the way we get jazzed by a fandom fix even if the product is mediocre. It amped me up. It had lots of engaging scenes. If they make more, I’m sure I’ll see them (except the Wolverine ones. Enough with that. I liked his appearance in this one though).
