X-Men Apocalypse

Is superhero fatigue real? If you watch these movies, it might be.

Fans of X-Men who saw the latest two movies — Logan and last summer’s X-Men: Apocalypse — probably noticed something kinda weird about one recurring character. Despite offering no continuity or explanation as to why it happened this way, the mutant Caliban showed up in both, in Logan played by Stephen Merchant, and in Apocalypse by Thomas Lemarquis. Despite a bit of an accent on Lemarquis’ part, they both looked mostly the same: albino, weird eyes, bald. There was just a weird lack of continuity, and James Mangold recently explained why.

Simon Kinberg is everything an aspiring writer could hope to be. He’s written some of the biggest and most expensive blockbuster movies of his generation. He’s leveraged his talent as a writer into a lucrative career in film and television producing. He’s pushed the boundaries of superhero films and will even tackle his very own Star Wars sequel in the not-too-distant future. He’s been nominated for an Academy Award. By any measure of success, Kinberg is one of Hollywood’s best and brightest.

The X-Men villain Apocalypse is like something out of Darwin’s nightmares. A devout believer in the most twisted form of evolution, he repeatedly tests the mutants of the Marvel Universe. The weak are culled. Only the strong survive.

X-Men: Apocalypse didn’t have a very great summer. The movie itself was not great, and its ad campaign, featuring huge billboards of Oscar Isaac’s Apocalypse choking Jennifer Lawrence, was roundly criticized for showing excessive violence against women.

Centuries from now, when scholar look back on 2016, they will note several key events. They will discuss the year’s President election, one of the most bizarre and tumultuous in our nation’s history. They will note the deaths of great artists like Prince, David Bowie, and Gene Wilder. And they will ponder with great curiosity the opening credits to Bryan Singer’s X-Men: Apocalypse, surely one of the most bats--- insane moments to ever kick off a $200 million movie.

X-Men: Apocalypse opened in the United States in May; after five weeks in theaters it’s starting to wind down its domestic theatrical run. (Last weekend it grossed an estimated $2.4 million on about 1600 screens.) But while the movie is slowly vanishing from theaters here, it’s yet to even open in certain international markets, including Japan. Over there, Apocalypse doesn’t debut until August, so the film’s promotional campaign continues in full force on that side of the Pacific. That includes this latest trailer, in which the star of Fox’s other (and far more financially successful) 2016 superhero movie shows up to promote his more famous colleagues.

Despite the diminishing returns of the X-Men series, they have accomplished at least one inarguably impressive feat: taking a supporting antagonist like Mystique and transforming her into a great, complex leading character, worthy of her place in Apocalypse as a mutant role model to Xavier’s gifted youngsters. But is she worthy of her own standalone movie? Bryan Singer certainly thinks so, though he seems to be taking Jennifer Lawrence’s contributions to the character for granted.

Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine was teased in the second trailer for X-Men: Apocalypse, but given that his part was more of a glorified cameo, that little teaser may have felt like a spoiler to some — even though Wolverine appearing in a new X-Men movie is hardly surprising. Hardly. As it turns out, Jackman almost had a bigger role to play in the new sequel, but it was ultimately reduced to avoid detracting from Jennifer Lawrence’s Mystique.

The most pleasant surprise of X-Men: Days of Future Past was Quicksilver, the speedy Marvel mutant played by Evan Peters. Although early promo photos made the character look, well, kind of lame, his big action sequence proved to be the best part of the previous X-sequel. It’s no surprise, then, that Peters has one of the best scenes in X-Men: Apocalypse, and a new video goes behind the scenes to show you how director Bryan Singer and his crew pulled it off.