X‑Men: Apoc­a­lypse

There’s a moment in X‑Men: Apoc­a­lypse when Sophie Turner’s Jean Grey offers a with­er­ing review of Return of the Jedi while on an unau­tho­rised class trip to the local mall. ​“Every­one knows the third film is always the worst,” she quips – the insin­u­a­tion trad­ing on the audience’s assumed col­lec­tive antipa­thy towards 2006’s The Last Stand. It’s a cheap gag, albeit one that suc­ceeds in elic­it­ing the desired response. But here’s the kick­er: this know­ing­ly iron­ic exer­cise in autoschaden­freude is even more meta than it first appears. Because not only is Apoc­a­lypse the dullest, most deriv­a­tive X‑Men movie to date, it is, pound-for-pound, the worst com­ic book movie in recent memory.

Aside from achiev­ing the unin­tend­ed and unprece­dent­ed feat of mak­ing us feel sor­ry for Brett Rat­ner, this scene is also notable for what it reveals about the rela­tion­ship between the peo­ple mak­ing these movies and the peo­ple con­sum­ing them. Cur­rent­ly every major stu­dio is locked in a high-stakes game of one-upman­ship, and as a result each new entry into the super­hero canon emphat­i­cal­ly promis­es big­ger, bet­ter, more bang for your buck. Some­times the end prod­uct lives up to the hype. But increas­ing­ly the qual­i­ty doesn’t seem to mat­ter. Espe­cial­ly not now that those with lit­tle or no pri­or inter­est or invest­ment in the orig­i­nal source material(s) com­prise the core tar­get demographic.

The point is this: at a time when a num­ber of com­ic book fran­chis­es have appar­ent­ly become too big to fail, the incen­tive to bring some­thing (any­thing!) new to the table has been erod­ed. That’s not to accuse writer/​director Bryan Singer, return­ing screen­writ­ers Simon Kin­berg, Michael Doughtery and Dan Har­ris, or any­one else involved in Apocalypse’s pro­duc­tion of hold­ing the most loy­al X‑Men fans in con­tempt. More to bemoan the wider trend of film­mak­ers glee­ful­ly tak­ing pot­shots at past mis­steps while offer­ing very lit­tle in the way of repa­ra­tion. After all, a joke made at the expense of an ear­li­er, ​“infe­ri­or” film is effec­tive­ly a joke at the expense of those poor saps (yeah, you) who bought a tick­et first time round and still came back for more.

Regard­less of whether you loved or hat­ed Bat­man V Super­man, Dead­pool or Cap­tain Amer­i­ca: Civ­il War, the very least you could say about those movies is that they weren’t afraid to take cre­ative risks. In truth, it’s been a long time since any­one looked to the X‑Men series to raise the bar for com­ic book movies every­where, but nev­er in its 16-year his­to­ry has the fran­chise felt so insipid, so hope­less­ly bereft of ideas or a broad­er sense of mean­ing. Heck, even The Last Stand had Vin­nie Jones run­ning around shout­ing things like ​“I’m the Jug­ger­naut, bitch!” How can you not love that?

Set a decade on from the events of Days of Future Past, this sequel opens not in leafy Westch­ester at the state­ly home-school of soon-to-be chrome-domed paci­fist pro­fes­sor, Charles Xavier (James McAvoy), but in ancient Egypt. It’s here, dur­ing an expen­sive-look­ing set piece that’s about as coher­ent and nour­ish­ing as a bowl of hiero­glyphi-spaghet­ti, that we’re intro­duced to alpha mutant En Sabah Nur, a hood­ed pur­ple loon played by a bare­ly lucid Oscar Isaac. To be fair, con­sid­er­ing Isaac has some of the most expres­sive, soul­ful eyes in the busi­ness, he’s sore­ly wast­ed in the guise of a gener­ic doom-mon­ger who glazes over at the first sign that some­thing inter­est­ing might be about to happen.

Sev­er­al mil­len­nia lat­er and En Sabah Nur is back in the groove, ready to wreak hav­oc. His first move is to dis­arm the world of its entire nuclear arse­nal, although he’s no pro­po­nent of world peace. Mean­while, Erik Lehn­sh­err aka Mag­ne­to (Michael Fass­ben­der) is some­where in rur­al Poland, wear­ing the look of a man who’s just dis­cov­ered a win­ning lot­tery tick­et in a fresh­ly washed sock. Raven (Jen­nifer Lawrence) is busy recruit­ing. Storm (Alexan­dra Shipp) is brew­ing nice­ly. Cyclops (Tye Sheri­dan) gets his eye in, sport­ing a rather fetch­ing pair of ruby-tint­ed Ray-Bans. And Quick­sil­ver (Evan Peters) once again runs away with MVP. Then Pro­fes­sor X is rein­tro­duced to a ghost from his past, and every­thing comes grind­ing to a halt.

For his 2011 fran­chise reboot, First Class, direc­tor Matthew Vaughn brought with him an excit­ing, tal­ent­ed young cast that point­ed to a bright Future for the X‑Men. Yet over the course of three films we’ve learned almost noth­ing about our favourite char­ac­ters. Despite their com­mit­ment to the cause, it’s start­ing to feel like Fass­ben­der, Lawrence and McAvoy have noth­ing left to give. And who can blame them? Not even Hugh Jack­man – sure­ly the only real rea­son any of us are still watch­ing these films – seems will­ing to stick it out, cash­ing in his pay­cheque in an all-too brief cameo before leav­ing a Wolver­ine-shaped hole in the (green-screened) set wall.

Starved of oxy­gen for much of the film’s two-and-a-half-hour run­time, these icon­ic, inher­ent­ly cin­e­mat­ic char­ac­ters turn to dust before our eyes. Speak­ing of which, the con­tin­ued shoe­horn­ing of the atroc­i­ties of the Holo­caust into a sto­ry con­cern­ing false idols and sys­tem­at­ic social cleans­ing leaves a sour taste in the mouth. Apoc­a­lypse may not be the first movie to exploit a real-world human tragedy for its own fic­tion­al nar­ra­tive ends, but it’s a par­tic­u­lar­ly crass and unnec­es­sary way to book­end a franchise.