X-Men: Apocalypse

            I finally got around to watching Logan a few nights ago. There was a time, not that long ago, when I wouldn't have missed something like that in the theater, but then I saw X-Men Origins: Wolverine. And X-Men: The Last Stand. And The Wolverine. And, let's face it: Days of Future Past is kind of overrated. To my relative surprise, Logan is a dark, violent, funny, moving film, far better than it has to be—so good, in fact, that I started questioning my judgments of some of those other X-Men movies. Your attitude going into experiencing a piece of art (and for our purposes here, I'm defining "art" as anything from "Water Lilies" to The Dark Knight Returns to Their Eyes Were Watching God to Grand Theft Auto V to whatever Shia Lebeouf is farting into a freezer bag as I type this) can have a significant impact on your enjoyment. On that note, I knew I'd watched X-Men: Apocalypse at some point since it became available to stream, but I could not, for the life of me, remember a single thing about it other than a vaguely negative impression and that Oscar Isaac is four feet tall. The general consensus among friends and acquaintances I've talked to about it can be summed up as, "It's a fun movie?" with or without an accompanying shrug. Could it be, I wondered, that I watched Apocalypse at the end of a long day, or in a particularly bad mood, and was unduly harsh in my evaluation?

            Short answer: no. This movie is garbage. This movie makes X-Men: The Last Stand look like Return of the Jedi and X-Men Origins: Wolverine look like The Godfather Part II.

            Longer answer: seriously, this movie is so bad. Like, through every scene I was shaking my head and wondering how something so many talented people worked on could be so shoddily constructed. There are a thousand plot holes, both large and small. It's never clear why any of the characters are doing anything; Apocalypse has so many powers he's functionally omnipotent, but we don't know what they are and they're never really explained, so despite the fact that the FATE OF THE WORLD is in the balance, it doesn't really feel like there's anything at stake; and for a big budget summer action movie, it looks kind of shitty. There are five writers attached, fourteen characters who have starred in comics of their own, and they're adapting threads of… I don't know for sure, so I'm just going to estimate 10,000 storylines from those comics; if too many cooks spoil the broth, well, in this case they turned it into diarrhea.

            We open in "Nile Valley – 3600 B.C.E." It looks like a cartoon, but there are some live-action extras in shapeless tunics chanting something incomprehensible, which I know from being a 40-year-old virgin (don't tell my wife) is "En Sabah Nur," Apocalypse's "real" name. Inside a pyramid, some kind of ceremony is going on involving a blue troll in sci-fi armor (that's Apocalypse) and L'il Oscar Isaac, into whom the life essence (or "jism") of Apocalypse is being transferred. Some guards in mascara make sex eyes at each other, after which they execute a trap, bringing the pyramid down on the ceremony and dropping Oscar Isaac, who has been transformed into the blue troll, into a pit so deep that an entire scene happens while he's falling. How did they dig a pit so deep using Bronze Age technology? How did they manage it without anybody knowing about it? Why are they rebelling against Apocalype? And why does it all look like an episode of Power Rangers circa 1992? I don't know, and like most questions relating to character, logic, and basic continuity, I don't think it ever occurred to anyone working on X-Men: Apocalypse to ask.

            Then we jump forward to a high school in 1983, where Scott Summers (Tye Sheridan), whom you may recall from the original X-Men trilogy as Cyclops and/or James Marsden, is being a dick. This will continue throughout the film, as Scott, like most everyone we'll meet, is less a character than a single, easily identifiable trait to be harped upon ad nauseam. That—and he has laser eyes. Scott might actually be one of the better-rounded characters in that he gets a trait and a superpower. As far as I can tell, Angel's (Ben Hardy) characterization is "has wings," and Moira McTaggart's (Rose Byrne) is "got psychically roofied in X-Men: First Class."

            That, by the way—you know, James McAvoy's Charles Xavier using his powers to make this woman forget months of her life—is played mainly for laughs. They'll walk into a room, and she'll be like, "This rooms seems familiar," and the other characters will share a knowing smile, like, "Ha ha, you don't even know that we erased your memories without your knowledge or consent, or even a quick discussion first." At the end, when Xavier, for literally no reason other than the fact that the movie's over, returns her memory, she just smiles at him. Like it's no big deal that our "hero" stole her memory against her will and then left it that way for decades.

            Anyway, after 45 seconds of Scott being a dick, we cut to Germany, where mutants are being forced to perform in cage fights. Angel, whom you may recall "has wings," is the reigning champion. He fights Nightcrawler (Kody Smit-McPhee) who, as one of the primary characters, "teleports" and "is Christian." The fight is broken up by Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), who rescues Nightcrawler, but not Angel. I know I'm beating a dead horse, but there's no absolutely no reason for Angel to get left behind except so he can become a villain later.

            Then we cut to Poland, where Magneto (Michael Fassbender) is working in a foundry under an assumed name. He has a human wife and a daughter who talks to animals. Anyone who's ever seen an X-Men movie will know that his family can't be long for this world, because Magneto's long-standing characterization other than "magnet stuff" is "haz a sad." And, true to that, the wife and daughter die in the next scene they're both in, impaled by a single arrow while they're hugging (the… irony?).

            The movie goes on like that for another two-plus hours, introducing way too many characters, bouncing them off each other, and occasionally checking in with the plot, which can be succinctly summarized as "Apocalypse wants to kill everyone," which takes a while to get going because he recruits a bunch of underlings he doesn't need. Why does he bother with hench-people when he spends most of the movie warping reality by pointing at things? Because that's the plot. Why does he want to kill everyone? Because that's the plot. Why does Quicksilver (Evan Peters) get involved? Because his scene was the best part of Days of Future Past, and also because that's the plot.

            Credit where it's due: Quicksilver's big action scene, in which he saves everyone in the Xavier School from an explosion at super-speed, is once again a standout. Even that, though, is predicated on a plot hole so big you could fly a Blackbird through it. He sees Magneto (his biological father, depending upon whether you ask someone from Marvel or Fox) on TV and goes to find Charles Xavier so he can ask him Magneto-related questions. (The TV he's watching, by the way, is a flatscreen, which nobody on set appears to have noticed despite the fact the film's only visual motif is IT'S THE EIGHTIES.) When he arrives on the outskirts of the school grounds, a good ¾ of a mile away, he cocks his head like a beagle hearing a peanut butter jar being opened somewhere in its home, somehow sensing that the school is about to explode so he can start getting everybody out.

            There are countless contrivances like that, and the 10,000^th time (again, just an estimate) something doesn't stand up to even cursory scrutiny, you start wishing you could ask, "Do any of you even want to be here? Was anybody really champing at the bit for an Apocalypse movie? Are you already starting to miss Hugh Jackman? I know I am."

            While I'm acknowledging the positive, or at least less negative, aspects of the movie, Fassbender and McAvoy do rise above the material to some extent, and I'm pretty sure Rose Byrne would do so as well if Moira McTaggart had any reason to be in the movie beyond the "hilarious" "comedy" of having had her agency stripped away by a man she trusted. Among the younger generation, Kodi Smit-McPhee is working his ass off to make Nightcrawler work and largely succeeds, and Alexandra Shipp is likable as Storm, despite the great big nothing-burger they both have to work with. Hugh Jackman shows up for 90 seconds as Weapon X Era Wolverine, and even with no dialogue and the world's worst mullet wig, he almost manages to steal the show. Special credit to Evan Peters, who, except for his signature scene, seems to know he's in a piece of shit and relaying his lines sarcastically.

            I could go on, but I'll leave you with this, because I think it perfectly encapsulates how little of a shit X-Men: Apocalypse gives. There's a post-credits scene in which a bunch of janitors are cleaning up the blood, bodies, and shell casings left after our heroes toured the Weapon X facility (all the characters go to Weapon X for a while, just so they could include that 90 seconds of Hugh Jackman, I think). But then, what's this? A nerdy science-type walks through carrying a steel briefcase! He walks down a few hallways, then goes into what I suppose must be the employee break room, where he opens a mini-fridge and pulls out a comically large vial labeled "WEAPON X DNA" in what appears to be Comic Sans.

            Fuck you, too, X-Men: Apocalypse. Fuck you, too.