X-Men: Apocalypse (Now with spoilers and plot discussion!)

[EnterpriseSovereign]

I saw it a couple of days ago, and liked it. Not nearly as good as Civil War, but better than BvS- I too noticed that it was only when Jean went full-on phoenix that she could put the hurt on Apocalypse.

IMO they could have done better when casting Jean and Storm- neither actress did as good a job as Janssen and Berry did.

Did anyone else catch their swipe at The Last Stand when they were discussing ROTJ and said the third film was the worst?

It was pretty cool the Quicksilver was there to save the day after Summers' Nice-Job-Breaking-it-Hero moment caused the mansion to be destroyed, though when it came to fighting Apocalypse he dropped the ball.

I did like how they managed to use Wolverine without it being contrived, it was no surprise when they opened his cell and revealed his presence. And given how many mooks he slaughtered on his way out he certainly made his presence felt!

It's going to be interesting to see how the series progresses, with the next film to be presumed to be set in the 90s how they then build up to the Registration Act, and how much of that timeline is still intact. With the first X-men film having been released back in 2000 they'd be all caught up and cannot follow that pattern for more than one film without overwriting most of what's already been established, unless they plan on doing a backdoor reboot. And IMO Hollywood's propensity for rebooting has reached ludicrous levels- Spiderman being the most blatant example.

Sadly with the timelines in question it's something they would seriously consider. The next film will probably arrive in 2018 with the '90s setting, then 2020 for the '00s, and finally 2022 with a '10s film. After that they'd have to set the 2024 entry in the present.

[Crazedwraith]

They seriously need to stop adding 10 years for each sequel. Seriously. The crew from First Class do not remotely seem 20 years old now. (also Cyclops is Havok's 'brother' and is twenty years younger. That's a hell of a sibling gap)

They need to slow down, keep the same actors for Cyclops and Jean and co and do another film set in the mid to late 80s to get the series back in control and not blundering all over the other films.

Though there's no way I'm accepting that the first trilogy or even just the first two happened after these prequels. There's no way Kelly's argument would be 'the intangible girl can walk into a bank' if he can say 'remember when a couple of mutants stole the worlds nukes? And then nearly blew it all up'

If it's an alternate timeline though, no cause and effect was established beyond chaos theory why Logan's alterations got Apocalpyse to rise again.

[Elheru Aran]

From what I vaguely understand, the last two X-men movies (DoFP and Apoc) have been Bryan Singer's way of 'resetting' the timeline via introducing an alternate universe in DoFP that intersects the original X-Men universe sometime before the first Wolverine movie. This resetting may have gone as far back as First Class, I'm not sure if Singer had planned it out that far ahead though. The X-men that exist at the end of Apocalypse are not going to be the same X-Men that were in the first movie.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

They started with '62 during the Cuban missile crisis, and moved the setting forward 10 years with each successive film. It should be noted there's one last Wolverine film set for release spring next year that looks like it'll be set in the present day- seeing how that intersects with the existing continuity will be interesting indeed.

In the post credits scene, can anyone shed light on the Essex Corp? Info on Wikipedia was pretty sparse, pointing straight to Nathaniel Essex/Mister Sinister- one supervillain I hadn't heard of before. It would make sense if he was attempting to acquire Wolverine's healing factor, since there was shown a sample of his blood labelled "Weapon X".

[FaxModem1]

Days of Future Past's ending showed that we're seeing the new timeline. The old one started by X-men 1 eventually ended in sentinels, Wolverine's adventure in Japan, and pretty much the whole planet being dead due to the war. Mystique as a public example of 'good mutants' compared to Magneto's idiotic 'We can kill you all' strategy seems to have made mixed public opinion on mutants.

Nightcrawler and company seemed to get no harassment at the mall in Westchester. Though that's not universal, of course, as East Germany has mutant cage fights and Caliban is making a killing smuggling mutants out into friendlier pastures. Thus is remarkably improved compared to the original timeline, wherein at the 2000s, mutants were still being harassed in the US.

[Elheru Aran]

They started with '62 during the Cuban missile crisis, and moved the setting forward 10 years with each successive film. It should be noted there's one last Wolverine film set for release spring next year that looks like it'll be set in the present day- seeing how that intersects with the existing continuity will be interesting indeed.

In the post credits scene, can anyone shed light on the Essex Corp? Info on Wikipedia was pretty sparse, pointing straight to Nathaniel Essex/Mister Sinister- one supervillain I hadn't heard of before. It would make sense if he was attempting to acquire Wolverine's healing factor, since there was shown a sample of his blood labelled "Weapon X".

A good deal of speculation has gone this way:

Originally Wolverine 3 was going to be pretty much 'Old Man Logan'. The problem with this is that storyline uses a lot of other Marvel characters which Fox doesn't have the rights to.

Then 'Death of Wolverine' came out a couple years ago. X-23 is the current Wolverine. She's... more or less... a clone of Wolverine. And recent photos have shown Hugh Jackman with a young female actress, as well as Patrick Stewart as an older, bearded Xavier.

So current thinking is that they're going to revise Old Man Logan by having Xavier take the Hawkeye role of crippled advisor, eventually kill Jackman off (he's been very vocal about Wolverine 3 being his last run at the role, the cameo in Apocalypse notwithstanding), and set up X-23 as a new Wolverine via Jackman-Wolverine busting up Sinister's cloning operation, which could be an offshoot/heir of the original Weapon X program.

Sinister may also be involved in the seventh X-Men film (you just know there's going to be one), as traditionally he's an antagonist to Scott Summers in particular.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Actually it was First Class that was the cameo, when he said "Go fuck yourselves" In Apocalypse he went on full "roaring rampage of revenge" and slaughtered at least a dozen bad guys- this was the first time we actually saw an appropriate amount of blood for all the carnage he wrought.

In Apocalypse it fell to Magneto to avoid the dreaded G-rating when he said, "Who the fuck are you?" to Apocalypse

I did kinda like how they had Xavier lose his hair by the transference. The issue I had with Apoc transferring his consciousness to Xavier is, wouldn't he also gain his disability?

[Crazedwraith]

I did kinda like how they had Xavier lose his hair by the transference. The issue I had with Apoc transferring his consciousness to Xavier is, wouldn't he also gain his disability?

The hosthe transferred to at the start had a healing factor. So Apoc would have healed his new bodies' spine if he successfully transferred.

[NeoGoomba]

Yeah Apocalypse's transferences have all of his powers carry over, in addition to gaining his hosts.

[Kojiro]

So current thinking is that they're going to revise Old Man Logan by having Xavier take the Hawkeye role of crippled advisor, eventually kill Jackman off (he's been very vocal about Wolverine 3 being his last run at the role, the cameo in Apocalypse notwithstanding), and set up X-23 as a new Wolverine via Jackman-Wolverine busting up Sinister's cloning operation, which could be an offshoot/heir of the original Weapon X program.

First up, I pity the poor woman who has to attempt to replace Jackman. No matter what she does it will be compared extremely harshly and there will be haters. I pity her ever more if the way it's done is bad.

Sinister may also be involved in the seventh X-Men film (you just know there's going to be one), as traditionally he's an antagonist to Scott Summers in particular.

Doesn't the stinger in Apocalypse basically guarantee that?

Also on reflection, I have decided I very much don't like this film.

edit: fixed tags

[Elheru Aran]

So current thinking is that they're going to revise Old Man Logan by having Xavier take the Hawkeye role of crippled advisor, eventually kill Jackman off (he's been very vocal about Wolverine 3 being his last run at the role, the cameo in Apocalypse notwithstanding), and set up X-23 as a new Wolverine via Jackman-Wolverine busting up Sinister's cloning operation, which could be an offshoot/heir of the original Weapon X program.

First up, I pity the poor woman who has to attempt to replace Jackman. No matter what she does it will be compared extremely harshly and there will be haters. I pity her ever more if the way it's done is bad.

Sinister may also be involved in the seventh X-Men film (you just know there's going to be one), as traditionally he's an antagonist to Scott Summers in particular.

Doesn't the stinger in Apocalypse basically guarantee that?

Also on reflection, I have decided I very much don't like this film.

edit: fixed tags

No joke on the 'replace Jackman', dude. It's gonna be a real pain in the ass. I'd almost favor them pulling out Daken, but people like that little shitstain even less than they like X-23 from what I understand.

It could be an interesting twist on 'Old Man Logan' I guess, if the 'post-apocalypse' that he goes through is actually the aftermath of X-Men: Apocalypse. You know, worldwide earthquakes and all that shit. You also have to wonder how the hell all that stuff reflected on the Academy. Is the rest of the world going to be cool with mutants after a worldwide disaster like that, caused by mutants? Seemed like they were getting back to a certain rapport, in the States at least ("they're not so bad maybe"). GG Apoc, way to flush that down the toilet?

The movie wasn't *so* bad. It certainly could've been done better-- it doesn't measure up nearly as well as I had thought initially-- but it's not terrible. It's certainly no X3.

[Kojiro]

The movie wasn't *so* bad. It certainly could've been done better-- it doesn't measure up nearly as well as I had thought initially-- but it's not terrible. It's certainly no X3.

To be fair it's not a terrible movie (a few plot holes not withstanding- like how did Wolverine end up with Styker?) but so much of it is off from a (well this) fans perspective. There almost zero in there that couldn't be tweaked to be better and in fact seems like it's been tweaked to be worse. Psylocke for example is one of my favorite characters. She already had more than enough sex appeal without giving her a damn boob window, but someone thought 'let's take a great representation of the costume- then fuck with it'. The whole film feels like that. Here's a cool concept, lets fuck it up, but just a little.

Also they had the X men in the 80s and they didn't use Dazzler. That's a fucking crime.