X-Men: Apocalypse (2016, PG-13)

I’m still trying to decide about this movie.  I don’t think it was as good as Days of Future Past, and I think First Class was better-made, even though I think Apocalypse equals that one for entertainment value, or is at least close to it.  There’s some definite clunkiness amid a number of strong performances and a handful of stellar sequences.

In keeping with the franchise’s new tradition of jumping 10 years with every film, we’ve hit the ‘80s now (not that anyone looks any older, and no one but Mystique and Wolverine has explicitly-stated reasons for their perma-youth.  Also, at this rate, they have one film to go before Xavier and Magneto need to look like Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellen again – is it just a switch that gets flipped one day?)  The Professor’s school is well-established and, after the events of Days of Future Past, mutants and humans are enjoying a time of relative peace.  However, a blast from the past – namely, an immortal, all-powerful mutant from ancient Egypt who positioned himself as a god – has just resurfaced to wreak major, world-ending havoc, and it’s up to heroes new and old to stop him.

Some of the action here is really impressive.  I love the big final battle, which finds a great balance between the various characters and their unique powers, and Quicksilver has another terrific speedster scene – I honestly can’t say which I like more, this one or the one from Days of Future Past (unfortunately, this is the only sequence in which the character really feels like the same Quicksilver.  I know it’s been 10 years, but it’s weird that he’d change thatmuch.  It feels wrong not to have him bouncing off the walls in most of his scenes.)  I love most of the casting for the new characters.  Sophie Turner (Sansa from Game of Thrones) makes an excellent Jean Grey, and the end of the film has me excited to see where things are going with her character.  Tye Sheridan does a nice job with Cyclops and, although Kodi Smit-McPhee is no Alan Cumming, he’s very good as young Nightcrawler, and he looks great.  Alexandra Shipp has all the makings of a wonderful Storm, but I don’t think she’s used very well here – I know I definitely wanted more from the story than I got for her.  All the old guard turn in good work, especially (no surprise) James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender.

The story, for me, is just all right.  Apocalypse is a little too “non-specified all-powerful megalomaniac” for me, and while Oscar Isaac (Poe from the new Star Wars) gives it his all, the script doesn’t give him much to work with.  Most of the newcomers’ storylines feel at least a bit shortchanged, and Magneto’s arc somehow feels both repetitive and unbelievable at the same time, which really shouldn’t happen.  Also, this is maybe a little thing, and I know there are lines in the movie to explain it, but it bugs me that Mystique and Beast spend so much of the movie looking like Jennifer Lawrence and Nicholas Hoult.  It feels disingenuous to the characters, like the film wants them more recognizable (especially J-Law) for monetary reasons; just didn’t work for me.

Warnings

Comic-book violence, swearing, drinking, naked Mystique, and thematic elements.

X-Men: The Last Stand (2006, PG-13)

Ah, the time-honored genre film/show trap of going “too big.”  Obviously, fans love flash and exciting moments, but they also love compelling stories and strong character development.  This movie trades too heavily in the former at the expense of the latter (premise spoilers.)

Two main plots here.  In the world at large, society has been rocked by news of a medical breakthrough, a “mutant cure.”  Opinion is divided as to whether the cure is a gift to make mutants “normal” and end their oppression, or a threat to their right to exist as unique, powered individuals.  Meanwhile, on a more personal note, Professor X introduces Wolverine to a long-buried blast from the past.  Jean’s tremendously powerful, highly unstable alter personality from adolescence, Phoenix, has reemerged and is leaving a trail of destruction in her wake.  The X-Men have a duty to stop her, but at what cost?  (If you’re wondering how these two storylines come together, it involves a certain silver-haired mutant supremacist who can manipulate metal.)

In essence, there’s a lot thrown in the pot here that doesn’t get much time to actually develop.  The mutant cure idea is an interesting one, but the main characters are so busy dealing with Phoenix that we see little of the issue from their perspectives.  Speaking of Phoenix – I don’t know what she’s like in the comics, but here, she feels like a lazy depiction of a suped-up “evil” twin/split personality, complete with stone-cold sociopathy and increased sexual aggressiveness (seriously, guys?)  Most of this story is from Wolverine’s viewpoint.  We don’t get much of a glimpse into the mind of Phoenix herself (or Jean, who’s still in there,) and due to plot developments, we also don’t get much of her with Professor X, whose history with the character has potential. 

Characters are similarly wasted.  Some are discarded in service of the plot, and others don’t get the chance to resolve the stories set up for them in the last film.  And that’s just the characters we already know.  A large part of the film’s “too bigness” is the ridiculous number of new mutants it introduces apropos of mostly nothing.  There are huge swathes of new characters brought in, but for the most part, we don’t get to know any of them.  They’re cool mutant powers that can walk and talk, but they’re not really people.  Movies with comic-book craziness going on need grounding moments, and we’re short on those here. 

Plenty of new cast members, a number of whom are good for “hey, look!” moments (though, for many, it’s less “hey, it’s that guy!” and more “hey, they were in X-Men before they did _____________?”)  Most prominently, we have Kelsey Grammer in a nice turn as Beast, and Ellen Page appears as Kitty, even getting a new moments of actual cool.  Minor roles are filled, variously, by Ben Foster (Russell from Six Feet Under,)Vinnie Jones (Gareth from Galavant,) Dania Ramirez (Maya from Heroes,) and Ken Leung (Miles from Lost – love him!)

Warnings

Comic book violence, language, and sexual content (including naked Mystique.)

Deadpool (2016, R)

I’m not very familiar with Deadpool (my first exposure was actually the test footage for this movie,) but I was aware of the excitement surrounding the character and the idea of a movie for him, as well as what was evidently the near-criminal waste of him/Ryan Reynolds in the Wolverine:  Originsmovie.  I also knew going in to expect a funny, high-octane show-the-blood-style comic-book movie a la Mark Millar.  Safe to say the film delivers on that every level.

Wade Wilson, a foul-mouthed mercenary with a don’t-make-a-thing-of-it preference for helping the little guy, has his life thrown off-kilter by a terminal cancer diagnosis.  When a shady guy in a suit promises to both cure his cancer and make him a superhero, Wade is skeptical but decides to try to keep his girlfriend Vanessa from having to watch him waste away.  He sneaks off in the middle of the night to the super-secret experimental lab, but the results aren’t what he bargained for.  He’s left functionally immortal, with an automatically-regenerating body, but the mutation has also made him grotesque, and he doesn’t think he can go home to Vanessa until he finds the scientist/sadist who did this to him and forces him to fix it.

Ryan Reynolds is absolutely perfect to play a vulgar, smartass, superpowered former mercenary on a revenge kick.  He’s funny and profane without (for me) veering too far into d-bag territory, and even with a mask completely covering his face for most of the movie, his screen presence is still charismatic (granted, I don’t know how often Deadpool is CGI’d, but that would still mean Reynolds is making the character come through on voiceover alone, so kudos to him either way.)  In order for wildly graphic, completely unapologetic violence to work for me, it really depends on the character, and Deadpool’s casually-cheerful brand of slaughter just seems to fit.

The plot is fairly formulaic, though it mixes things up by extenstive use of a nonlinear structure.  But what it lacks in storytelling creativity, it makes up in snarky one-liners.  There’s mid-fight banter, cheeky sex jokes, pop culture references, and colorful analogies, not to mention huge amounts of fourth-wall breaking (sometimes explicit, with Deadpool directly addressing the camera, other times just throwaway lines – my favorites include a reference to sewing Deadpool’s mouth shut and a Stewart-or-McAvoy Professor X distinction.)  One place, though, where the movie falls down for me is with Deadpool’s much-vaunted pansexuality.  It’s arguably represented, but there aren’t any non-heteronormative references that couldn’t be explained away as jokes if desired.  Since Deadpool does spend most of the film preoccupied with his monogamous girlfriend, it’s understandable that we mostly get that side of things, but a single line mentioning an ex-boyfriend or zhefriend wouldn’t have broken the bank.

Other than Reynolds, the only actor I’m familiar with is Morena Baccarin (Inara from Firefly) as Vanessa.  She does what she can with a pretty thin girlfriend characterization.  I also enjoy Brianna Hildebrande as an X-Men trainee, the (as Deadpool notes) awesomely-named Negasonic Teenage Warhead.  I mean, how do you get cooler than that?  I wish we’d gotten to see more of her in action, but little we do get of her powers is pretty hardcore.

Warnings

Strong violence, language, sexual content, drinking/smoking, and drug references.