In Defence of X-Men

So the X-Men movies have had a pretty rough go of it, haven't they? It's got to the point that people are in agreement, the best one is the one about time travel! When was the last time you heard about a good time travel movie??? That's right, Men In Black 3 (And hark at all who thought I was going to say Back to the Future!). But we can agree that for the most part, when introduced into a franchise in which it has previously been unacknowledged, time travel is weird and feels like a bit of a cop-out and it takes someone or something very special to introduce it and use it without it feeling gimmicky or like a quick get-out-of-jail-free card. And X-Men: Days of Future Past did that well, thanks to Bryan Singer and co. Their story was well-rounded, full of character and charm, witty but emotional and conveyed a real sense of desperation and hopelessness while still giving our characters a way out.

Not so for Apocalypse.

Now, I want to draw your eye once more to the title there: In Defence of X-Men. Because while I've heard some bad things, I really do believe it is better than the critics are giving it, and I think there are some reasons why it's bad that can be addressed without detracting from the overall movie.

So let's start with problem number one for X-Men: Apocalypse: It brings in too many characters.

Inherently, this is no bad thing. An ensemble cast can work well when it's been built up and we've had time to see it grow and evolve into the hero group (see Avengers Assemble). What doesn't work so well, is throwing a bunch of new characters at us and expecting their personalities to shine through so strongly on a first showing with a bunch of established characters taking up parts of the action.

Take Scott Summers in this case. He's a bit of an X-critic punching bag, in part because he's such a goody-goody and there's not a lot of substance to him, and I think a lot of that is fair. In this he's the high school nerd going through weird changes, only in this case instead of puberty it's frickin' laser eyes. So after he zaps the class bully his brother Alex (who we saw in First Class and who does and even better turn here) takes him to Xavier's school. And it's at this point the movie loses him for me.

See, the problem with Scott Summers is he's trying to be the badass in Charles's Academy and it just doesn't work, it's so out-of-character for the guy we saw in the scenes before, sitting quietly and studiously in class until his eyes freak out and he beams his a-hole classmate. And they try to give him that reputation but it doesn't work with a couple of throwaway lines, not when he's being bullied too. You might as well write "Nerd" on his forehead and go with that archetype rather than try to pretend he's a cool rebel kid. Scott Summers would be a really good character if we could see a consistent side to him, and it's the major problem. The movie tries too fast to make him too many things and he doesn't get to be the leader of the X-Men or show why he should be. He's just... in it too much to be as badly characterised as he is, but not enough to characterise him well. It's a dilemma.

Quicksilver suffers from a similar thing in this one, too. After having his awesome scenes in Days of Future Past, in this he's turned into a slow, self-deprecating nerd with issues and it doesn't fit how we saw him literally one movie ago. The fast-talking, wise-cracking music-lover with a penchant for playing jokes is suddenly awkward and shy and kinda goofy? I don't buy it, Bryan.

So characterisation became a problem in Apocalypse because there were too many characters, but it's not the worst mistake the movie makes (although it's a doozy, hoo boy!). No, the movie goes further by making the students the heroes.

I found this far worse because it just changed the whole tone of these movies. All of a sudden there's no tension because it's these three kids on a zany adventure! And it's made worse by the introduction of previous characters from the franchise. Hey look kids, it's Wolverine! Isn't he crazy and kooky too! And the problem with this is, Wolverine frickin' kills people. And even with blood splashes and you seeing him actually stabbing people in the chest, it still feels so light-hearted and fun, it's a kid's adventure!

You see my problem. There's never any tension because the idea that the kids could come to harm is laughable, even in a movie as dark as this. This is a movie where people get sucked into the earth and have their necks sliced open by a family pendant and you're just watching and thinking "These kids aren't gonna get hurt. There's every reason they should but they won't." Suddenly it's not that dark sort of movie.

I want to clarify here: I don't want to see kids being hurt in movies. That doesn't automatically make it darker. But there's an inherent problem with children in anything but movies aimed at children, and that's that they are not allowed to act as children would act.

Scott Summers is some angry, lonely teenager, as is Jean Grey. Nightcrawler more so (yeah, he's back, and he's pretty fun. I still like Nightcrawler); and yet when danger threatens they're all level-headed, calm, rational. There's no panic, from people who have never trained to fight; these are in essence regular high school students going through some extreme and admittedly terrifying superpuberty with their mutant powers, and they're not allowed to scream or cry or freak out in a way any normal kid would under the circumstances they're placed in. All because the conventions of the story say no, they don't. And it leads to this ultimate problem.

The ultimate problem with X-Men: Apocalypse is that it inhabits two different universes. The first is the 12/12A universe of fantasy violence, occasional swearing, dark themes and being able to show blood on-screen. The other is the PG universe of kids on adventures, lucking their way through challenges and hiding in plain sight because they're not allowed to be seen fighting anyone, let alone an actual human, and acting as though everything they're going through is comparable to finding out the picnic they're having is now out of cheesecake. This is the major, major issue with Apocalypse and in fact all of the X-Men films: as soon as you bring the school into it, these heroes become kids. They're no longer cannon fodder or redshirts or even innocent bystanders. Now they're invincible story-breakers who can't be killed because that would up the rating two or three clicks and then we're marketing to the same audience as Deadpool did, only with a less suitable IP. And they have to sit alongside the adults, who can die but won't because now this is a kids movie too, somehow, and these adults are better established and they have their own arcs going on and they have more complicated relationships with each other because of how much they've grown, and that's all pushed aside for the kids' story. It just doesn't feel like the new X-Men is the problem. We've reached the point where things must collapse, because the kids are back and everyone has to stop drinking and swearing.

I think that's the main problem, is this clash of categories. Two universes grinding against each other, and they just fracture and fall apart into X-Men: Apocalypse.

But I did say this was in defence of X-Men, didn't I? And that's because, at its heart, X-Men: Apocalypse is a good movie.

It still deals with the same themes, it's still very soap opera and Charles and Erik have emotional moments. But the movie can't deal with them so much because it's got to deal with Apocalypse being evil (which he is, but in a very non-threatening way so that's a shame) and the new characters it brings in to help or hinder him.

In truth, there isn't a lot I can say in defence of this film. It's still good: Quicksilver gets some amazing moments in between his bouts of crappy characterisation, Mystique is now the voice of a mutant revolution which is a really cool arc, and Scott's own story would have been pretty good if it had been more focused on him, which it couldn't be. I would've liked to see more of young Storm, as she was pretty badass and had an arc of her own going as Apocalypse's henchwoman, and in fact a lot of the new mutants they threw in for Apocalypse to play with were pretty cool. Psylocke was good, as was Angel (although I preferred his iteration in X3: The Last Stand), and there was a lot of material they had to work with which worked well and made for a compelling story. The rise of apocalypse, a brilliant ongoing battle of wills between Charles and Apocalypse, Erik's loves and loyalties and Quicksilver's parentage; in their own right, a lot of this stuff would've made a great movie.

But Bryan Singer tried to spin too many plates this time, and the wobbles were apparent from the beginning. You can watch them fall about halfway through, except for the few he keeps spinning. Those he spins spectacularly, and I think the X-Men films should be applauded for the way they try to spin two styles of movie and twist them together, even if it doesn't work very well.

Adieu!