f13.net

Some casting news I like...

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/71096 (http://www.aintitcool.com/node/71096)

I never loved the character, but Olivia Munn is an actress I appreciate and can see in the role...

I'm assuming the whole 'Warren Worthington as the Horsemen / Angel of Death' is a part of this film... I'm kind of shocked there was not a thread for this film yet.

No she's a horrible choice for Psylocke.

She's a great choice for Psylocke as long as Psylocke NEVER EVER SPEAKS. She's a nice lady, a geek and hot as hell, but she is a terrible actress.

There are so many actual British Artists that could have done this role perfectly.  That's all I'm saying.

Also, what the fuck.  Is she one of the 'future' ones given that the main cast are Sophie Turner younger ?

Does Psylocke even have a British accent anymore?  She's been changed so much.

She does in the game.  It's yummy.

And by 'yummy' you mean terrible, right?

I'm pretty sure whoever writes these X-Men movies doesn't know very much about the characters anyway.  They probably just go down a checklist of names, look at a picture or two and make up the rest themselves.  See: Sunspot

I thought she was Japanese now.

Yes she is, or more specifically her body is.

Either way it's not going to matter.. I highly doubt they are going to show her back story in the movie, that would confuse the fuck out of 99% of the audience.  I think without that info though people would be more like, why does the ninja girl have a British accent instead of a Japanese one.

She has a Japanese body but kept the British accent.  I liked the old Betsy Braddock more though.

As much as I hate her acting, I'd still hit it like the fist of an angry god.

Well, duh.  :awesome_for_real:

Gonna have to wait your turn. The god emperor of Wisconsin isn't through with her yet  :why_so_serious:

This, so much this.  I hated the new version when it happened.

I thought the original costumes for Besty Braddock were utterly stupid looking - though turning her Japanese and making her a ninja dressed in a goddamn one piece was equally stupid, just in a more fan-service (re: wank) manner.

It would have been easy enough to change her costume.  Even someone like Dazzler's gone through a bunch of different ones.

Reasonably hot and a bad actress, actually. Hot as hell is pushing it.

:facepalm:

It's the square nails.

The first comment in the article (actually second now):

"Olivia Munn is a soulless phoney and a zero-grade skank. The only thing more pathetic than Olivia Munn are the fanboys who bought her geek-goddess fangirl act and continue worshipping her and believing she is some sort of legitimate talent."

I actually liked her in the Newsroom.

(http://i.imgur.com/bzmgdfj.gif)

I've seen her do horrible stuff - and some good stuff.  Most of the horrible stuff I've seen were intended to be horrible (G4 era), or were just crappy shows as a whole where her biggest mistake was taking the role.  I think she has more to offer.

I think worrying about any cast member beyond the marquee protagonists in an X-Man movie hardly makes sense. Look at how crowded the cast is going to be--some X-Men are very nearly window dressing inevitably unless the movie is incredibly deftly written and directed. First Class did a fair-enough job giving everybody a wee measure of personality but nobody was going oh boo hoo Havok is dead in the next movie. Munn probably will have a few lines of plot-driven dialogue and a single establishing scene and otherwise will just stand around, hopefully not in the extremely unfortunate thong-ninja outfit she had in the comics.

But Havok was the only non-major mutant who didn't die by the next movie...

How are we qualifying "non-major"?

At this point I'd rather Fox put down some serious TV money and made an X-men series. The only way you're ever going to give characters like Betsy a chance to shine is to decompress the shit out of the usual movie narratives. I read X-men comics primarily for the character moments and interactions; plot takes a big step back as far as I'm concerned. Then again, they only needed to work off two issues in the previous movie and my god they fucked that up royally.

I kinda shocked Fox hasn't made an X-Force movie.

X-Men as some kind of super hero based soap show.   I can totally see that working.

I've been calling X-men soap opera for years. The only real difference is the characters in X-men are more believable.

Looking back through the old comics I have stashed away and I can say.... I never thought about it like that before, but now that I see it...

Do I need to post that huge picture graph that shows exactly what xmen have slept with who over the years again?    :awesome_for_real:

Of course it's a soap opera.  It's been nothing but a soap opera with explosions for many decades now.  That's why people keep reading it.

And yes, the most important part of casting somebody for an xmen movie is finding somebody that looks like the character.  That's about it.  Munn is hot and vaguely asian.  Ergo, she is the perfect Psylocke.

Being vaguely Asian is a problem.

She's a white woman trapped in an asian girls body.  So getting a half white, half asian girl seems pretty spot on.   :awesome_for_real:

This is of course the OTHER thing the X-Men have been for decades: the product of Chris Claremont's rather intricate sexual fetishes.

I think Psylocke becoming Asian is Jim Lee's fault.

X-men is written as a 'family' story - they're brothers and sisters in a struggle against oppression.

Of course they all sleep with each other.

wut.

I think he's saying don't go to jgsugden's family reunions.  :why_so_serious:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tqxzWdKKu8

Reunion, wedding, singles club. When they're all the same thing it cuts down on the travel costs I imagine.

(http://i.imgur.com/vp7C7i7.jpg)

Apocalypse, Storm, Psylocke - from an EW special.  Not sold on the look of Apocalypse, if I'm honest.

I guess I am alone because really like it, I can definitely see some Egyptian Pharaoh influences on it.   Apocalypse was always going to be a hard one to do though since his suit was almost robotic if I remember correctly.  I am not sold on the actress they got to play Psylocke though.  Something about her look, she looks more like the British Betsy Braddock then the Japanese ninja telepath.  We know Psylocke, Storm and Magneto are going to be two of the four horsemen, any word on who is the third and fourth?

Munn looks fine as Psylocke, I just can't believe they got her to squeeze into that costume.

As for Apocalypse, if I didn't know it was Oscar Isaac playing him I would never have been able to tell. Seems weird that you'd take an actor with his charismatic, smokey good looks and turn him into PURPLE PHARAOH.

Yellow Spandex.

Apocalypse looks awful.

Keep in mind that's pre-cgi and that apocalypse is a shapeshifter.  I'll wait to see how it pans out in the theaters.

Man, what a lost opportunity by not casting Arnold Vosloo.

I like Psylocke and have no issues with her looking like British Betsy Braddock.  :grin:  Also, costume is straight out of the books.

As for the last horseman, it's going to be Angel. Or Archangel - don't know if he'll have feathers or metal wings.

Olivia Munn on her Psylocke costume. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgS7nfdRMC8)  :awesome_for_real:

The look of wistful remembrance that comes across every man's face at the end. Hilarious.

The 1990's called, they want their costumes back.

I actually think she looks fine (and I do mean FINE) as Psylocke, I've just always doubted her acting ability. I even think Apocalypse looks ok as well, but I've always hated that character (and Mr. Sinister who was pretty much just a different powered version of Apocalypse) so I didn't really care how close to the books they got.

Psylocke is not a character who is particularly complicated if they're doing 90s X-Men shit, though. She just has to look like she's taking a shit when she shoots psychic knives and be a bit emo about something something. She doesn't get genuinely interesting until quite recently.

The main problem with Apocalypse is he's not....big.  He looks like some dude in a purple suit and while muscly it's not this giant imposing thing.  They really should have pulled off some LOTR height tricks to make him simply a size larger than humans should be.  It's putting him next to those actresses that is the most jarring, he looks so absolutely average in size and he really shouldn't.

He's a terribly-designed character in the comics who largely doesn't have a personality beyond "BAD GUY". I think anything you get that isn't outright fuckstupid is a bonus. He looks ok in these pictures.

(http://i.imgur.com/1DKRPFx.jpg)

Now THAT I'd see.

Wow. So they've finally dropped the leather look and actually put heroes in costumes.  Nice.  Munn looks great.  Apoc came along after my interest in reading/collecting X-Men waned so I don't care much about him either way.  New Storm looks cool as well.  I liked the last two X-Men movies so I'll wind up watching this I'm sure. 

Apoc is way too small - he looks like an evil dark elf.

Storm isn't black enough. (The actress is half-black) Storm is supposed to be from sub-Saharan Africa and is usually depicted as very dark skinned. Part of the reason her character design works is that her white hair contrasts her dark skin -  looking close to Caucasian it's not nearly as effective. I suppose there aren't many young black actresses around, but still.

Also it's not racist if I want a character to be more black, not less!

This kinda bothered me as well.  I like my Storm how I like my coffee, strong and black.

Were people saying Halle Berry wasn't black enough back in 2000?  :facepalm:

There were so many things more wrong with storm then it was hard to say.

edit to add: The main complaint was still that Berry's Storm wasn't powerful, regal enough to be Ororo Munroe.  Storm is supposed be the literal embodiment of nature and needs the gravitas of character to pull it off. This is a woman that was worshipped as a god and needs to behave appropriately.

When I think of storm I picture a young trim Viola Davis.

If you're talking about fan-casting Storm, then someone like Danai Gurira would be a better fit.  But let's be serious, the entire Fox X-Men franchise barely pays lip service to most of the characters anyway so singling out Storm is kind of silly.

The actress is black enough to play young Halle Berry, which is who she is actually playing.

Who wasn't a good storm to begin with.

When I did a quick google search of black actresses Tika Sumpter seemed pretty good to me, in terms of look.

The big problem I had with Berry is that Storm should be commanding and Berry just isn't that. When she tries to play at being commanding it just comes off as silly. In terms of someone who can play that role Angela Bassett comes to mind.

It's like 15 years to late to complain about Halle Berry as Storm, they are basically committed to the look now.

They aren't committed to shit.  The new prof X still has hair for fucks sake and as said above, the first xmen movies were 15 years ago, no one gives a shit who played storm previously.

He loses his hair in this movie.

Umm, Halle Berry was Storm in the last movie. 

Yes because trying to stick to any kind of continuity in this abortion of a franchise is a good idea.  They actually started to get away with it in first class but....

I think what you are looking for is the X-Men reboot that is supposed to come after AoA.  This is the last movie that will deal with these characters.  It's supposedly the reason that Deadpool is not part of this same universe... well that and Wolverine: Origins.

He goes bald in this one.  Him having hair was a purposeful decision in the evolution of the character.

Not really, the "reboot" is that they are mostly going to the original cast of characters from the first movie (Jean, Cyclops, Storm, etc) but played by younger actors, which are this same ones that are going to appear in AoA. 

(http://s7.postimg.org/h9vui4ep7/apo.jpg)

Yup.  Power-Rangers badguy.

Also saw today they're boasting of a "bigger and better" Quicksilver scene. They're falling into the trap of too many mutants already.

It's the fucking X-Men. Of COURSE they are going to put too many mutants in.

And then make it all about wolverine anyways.

Pretty sure they cant with this one, since according to the end of DoFP logan should be safely locked away wherever the Weapon X experiments took place and have his memory blanked in the "young xmen" timeline that this will be set in.

I think you need to watch that scene again.

That psylocke costume looks like something from Adam West's Batman. Or worse, George Clooney Batman.

I get that the comic looks like that, but I'm not sure overliteral adaptation is wise in the spandex area.

How so?  "Young X-Men" timeline logan was just dredged up from the bottom of a lake unconcious and stryker/mystique had him.  Sure, it is safe to assume that mystique may drag him off somewhere else, but it is also just as possible that she knows enough about what stryker was doing that she decides to put him through the weapon x program anyway.  It is hard to say, since if they deviate too far from  the weapon X origins background of the Wolverine, wouldnt that have the possibility of De-synching Logan from the "Old X-Men" timeline version of himself?  We know he wakes up in the future to a different timeline, but we dont know how different it is.

You are right though, since stryker/mystique has him at the end there, it is entirely plausable that she takes him over to apocalypse's side and we end up with Logan, Horseman of the Apocalypes (he was Death, wasnt he?)

Okay, you have at least acknowledged that it was Mystique and not Stryker but I feel you maybe overthinking it.  When we first see Mystique in DoFP, she is liberating mutants to stop them being experimented on and that's her whole motivation throughout the film. I think it's reasonable she is doing the same here - rescuing Logan so that he doesn't get experimented on. Why would she have a change of heart otherwise?

I'm not saying that Logan won't end up in Weapon X again - Stryker is going to be in AoA as well - but I just don't feel you can read that into the end of DoFP. (Also, having Weapon X implies Alkali Lake and Alkali Lake implies death of Jean Grey and we know that no longer happened in Old X-Men timeline version so, yeah - maybe Weapon X didn't happen.)

But that means he has shit bone claws.  So that's not likely.

Yeah but

Basically, they could just give him metal claws again and no-one apart from the die hard neckbeards are actually going to give a shit whether it was because of Weapon X or not.

Fixed point in time, you know.

Magneto did it... painlessly.

Arise! Apocalypse is upon us! (Official Trailer) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COvnHv42T-A)

That looks decent. I have no problems with Apocalypse's costume. I'm more thrown off by 1) Stark girl as Phoenix/Jean Gray and 2) the overabundance of Jennifer Lawrence in non-Mystique form.

Apocalypse just looks kind of puny, that's all. Except for the part where he's not.

That last shot of bald McAvoy is pretty epic. Otherwise, just seems like another superhero movie with a big bad.

Memorial Day?  That's one hell of a long tail.

I get a very bad X3 vibe off this with how much they are gonna try and cram in there.  Might be good but after AV2 these big team up movies are a wait and see for me.

That's not even remotely the problems of X3. It was a very bad script. Plus some terrible costuming/prop work.

Big case of meh, least Apoc doesn't look as stupid purple as those earlier shots did. Bryan Singer is making though so could be good.

Have we reached peak superhero yet?

No, that's not for me.  Not from that trailer.  Nope.  Shame.

Would be interesting for someone to try a story that has lots of supers in it that isn't about "OMG cities will die! the world might be destroyed!"    I don't think anybody's just done a plain old showdown between supers that isn't about world destruction but just about grudges between people who happen to have superpowers, for example. I suppose the problem with plots that aren't "world or city will die", the stakes are generally rooted more in an established superhero mythos where stories are cranked out serially. You can't tell the story of how Wolverine and Nightcrawler go take Colossus out to a bar so they can cuss him out for being a turd to Kitty Pryde only to end up in a neighborhood-destroying bar-brawl with the Juggernaut unless you're doing in a serial format--it doesn't make sense as a multimillion dollar extravaganza that takes three years to make.

Yes.  And we've been there since Avengers I and will likely still be there for a number of years more...

I think you're 100% right they should do these stories.  Empire is the best Star Wars and is the one that lacks the big space battle scene at the end.  These are serial stories now, even if each episode is spread out by years.  There is room to do the personal story rather than the big story.  They could have done Cap 2 without the end of SHIELD - with the battle being all about the battle for Bucky's soul.  Why?  Because they earned it by telling Cap I and Avengers. 

That looks, meh.

Spiderman. Also Thor.

But aside from that, not much on the big screen - though the netflix series are great for exactly this reason.

Though I suppose you could argue almost all the good super hero movies are actually about this, only with a dull bit at the end where people/robots hit each for no reason.

One could argue that Ant-Man is a movie with smaller stakes.

Same stakes as iron man really, which is mass production of super dangerous weapons to the highest bidder and in this case, hydra.

Are you saying it flew over my head? Impossible, I am too quick, I would catch it.

I ruse.

Looks decent.  Sort of on the fence, but Brian Singer does mostly good work so there's that.

Also, teenage boys.

Are we talking about the movie audience or Singer?

 :awesome_for_real:

Someone photoshop a black and white Drax sitting in front of the microphone for Lakov.

How soon you forget that Singer gave us Superman Returns!

thatsthejoke.jpg

Lol.. this is getting shit on in reviews.  Like worse than X-Men Last Stand reviews.

Good.  Those who do not learn from last stand are doomed to repeat it. something, something mutants, magneto, nazi parallels, etc.

The trailers don't give any indication that there is any plot other than the X-men fighting Apocalypse and the Horsemen.

And Jennifer Lawrence cashing a fat paycheck in another action movie franchise she is long bored of.

JLaw wants to come back for more X-Men films.  She changed her mind about dropping out.  I think she likes the security of having a franchise filling her bank account.  I don't blame her really. 

Well that and they agreed she didn't have to wear the blue makeup 90% of the time. Mystique runs around looking pink in just about every scene we've seen so far. You know, totally counter to the whole journey of Mystique going from being ashamed to being proud of who and what she is.

Does including Apocalypse even HAVE a plot beyond that? I mean, that's his shtick, right? He's evil and just wrecks places throughout history. The Snidley Whiplash of mutantkind. I've always found him more one dimensional than Thanos but I never knew more about him than the 90's X-men cartoon.

Apocalypse is not only an absolutely dull turd of a villain in the comics, he was introduced in one of the most muddled periods of X-Men continuity, and that's saying something. The only time he's been even remotely interesting has been when he's been dead and they're looking into some of the consequences of his refitting of other mutants.

Apocalypse's dullness and stupidity is only eclipsed by Mr. Sinister and Stryfe in terms of sheer stupidity. Stryfe is the worst - a literal clone of an already cloned baby that was sent into the future to save its life than sent back to the past to save the future.

God, the more I even say it, the more I cringe. X-Men really jumped the shark about the time X-Factor started, came back a bit when Grant Morrison was writing it, then promptly shit itself again until Matt Fraction came along. Halfway through his run, it shit itself again and began to eat its own arm.

The only way to do good X-Men is really to strip the concept down to the core and keep it clean. First Class did a decent job of that. Why they let Bryan Singer come back to start fucking it up again, I have no idea.  I get the vague impression that Fox really doesn't particularly *want* a superhero franchise. They'll take some money if they have some money to make, but they're not going to focus any effort on it.

The hate this is getting from early reactions is pretty intense. Even the people who kind of like it are saying it's sort of boring.

Age of Apocalypse was a decent storyline, although little of that has to do with Apocalypse himself. It would be hard to do as a movie though because they can barely establish a baseline continuity in the X-men movies which makes it near impossible to do a contrasting alternate reality. Also it's a little close in some ways to Days of Future Past, but with mutants as the oppressors.

Even with Apocalypse being a dud of a villain though they could still make an interesting movie, but the trailers don't even hint at one interesting sub-plot or character arc. There hasn't been one memorable moment or line of dialog in any of the trailers or TV spots for this movie.

I saw the TV trailer for the first time last night. Looked like dogshit.

As an observation, Marvel seems to make better Heroes, while DC makes better villains. Marvels biggest problem has been they they have tons of heroes so their Villians have to be stupendously powerful. This makes them pretty one dimensional as the focus are always on the heroes, and all the villains are really are the threat that unites the Heroes. DC however seems to have competitively stacks of villains so the Heroes have to be Mary Sue powerful to counter them, and the temptation DC always has to go Grimdark does not help. Hell they are making teams of their villains at this point. And as an example, Batmans adversaries are pretty obviously aspects of Batman himself, so the stories are actually really about the villains as Bruce Wayne has to always be in his batsuit to fight them, so he cant just decide to say "fuck this" and toss a few billion at the cops and the Wayne foundation.

I saw an article with some of the Marvel guys talking about their "weak" villains.  They pretty much said that they primarily focus on the heroes and their struggles and the villains are there to provide some conflict and such for the story.  They do agree they can do a little better with the villains but remain steadfast that these movies will always be about the heroes.

All of Marvel's most interesting villains end up as heroes in the end.

Outside of the Joker and Lex Luthor (even though in multiple attempts they've yet to do Luthor particularly well in the movies), what good villains does DC have?

Scarecrow, Raz al'Ghul, Freeze in his modern incarnation of a scientist trying to save his wife. Lobo was pretty popular for a while. Hell the Batman Animated series had a whole Gallery of them, and Batman the Brave and the Bold had lots of guest star villians people had never heard of.

Darkseid, as ridiculously concepted and obsessed as he is, puts Thanos, Apokalypse, AND Galatakus to shame. In terms of feeling a sense of threat and power as well as actual personality.

Hell, any of the Legion of Doom characters were more interesting than most of Marvel's offerings.

Batman's Rogues mostly don't work very well when they're pitted against more powerful metahumans. (Joker and Scarecrow both have some possibilities).

Flash's Rogues are fun, colorful, etc. but also mostly don't have very interesting personalities--e.g., they can't hold up a whole film as antagonists for the entire Justice League.

Green Lantern's only memorable enemy is an "Anti-Green Lantern", which doesn't work as the central bad guy of a team movie.

Wonder Woman's enemy Doctor Psycho is sort of interesting--mind-controlling, cowardly, and misogynistic, kind of like a nerd-in-mom's-basement type. Otherwise her enemies couldn't really hold a film as the chief baddie. Maybe Ares, I guess, but he's generally kind of boring in personality terms.

Aquaman has a visually fun enemy (Black Manta) and he's got an evil brother, plus Atlantis could potentially sort of drive a team-level story.

Martian Manhunter, nope.

----

Justice League-level villains otherwise:

Crime Syndicate is fun, but you can't launch a film with them.
Darkseid needs careful handling if you want to establish the "god-like" terror. He almost needs to be Lovecraftian, I think--very very far beyond humanity, even super-humanity.
Injustice League/Society is fun but generally "good team v. bad team" would be hard to handle in a 2-hour movie.
Vandal Savage is a bad character and has never been handled well in comics or in other media.
Brainiac might make a good team-level bad guy.
Eclipso is sort of stupid but I see some potential.
Krona is stupid.
Amazo might be fun.
Prometheus could be good if handled correctly. The Morrison JLA issue that introduced him could make a pretty fair JL film.
Parasite--any power-stealer can make a good threat.
Despero--I have a soft spot for the original side-fin version. Could team him with Kanjar Ro, Queen Bee, etc and make a pretty fair "Earth v. Space" JL story.
The General (Eiling)--kind of depends on the prior introduction of the Shaggy Man as a threat to work really well
T.O. Morrow--with some revamping, this could be a surprisingly fun character
Ultra-Humanite--body-switching mad scientist, kind of too much like Luthor in most versions
Brother Blood--probably not.

Amazo as presented in the comics is a hilarious campy piece of shit.

'Ivo's Android' as presented in the DCAU was god damned terrifying and amazing. Everything is about execution in the end and the DCAU had it in spades. The DCU does not.

Well, he looks absolutely fucking ridiculous, for sure. The idea of an android that 'reads' powers is a classic good thing, though. Super-Adaptoid in the MU. But it's not really a 2-hour film premise. It's more like a fun problem to solve in the big mid-movie set-piece. (Like the airport battle in Civil War.).

I had this same thought but then realized that really, only Batman has good villains. Most of the other DC villains are even worse than Marvel's in my opinion.

Mirror Master, Captain Cold, Weather Wizard? The Flash has the best alliterations ever!

Eh, you could be right there...

Also, Marvel does have good villains that could drive a movie, but Fox, etc, holds the rights to them.  Doctor Doom is a great villain if done correctly.  Magneto as well.

Honestly, I think part of the problem is that ALL superhero cinematic universes have tried to become more "realistic" and for the most part villains in the comics do not have and have never had realistic motivations that hold some degree of psychological weight. In comparative terms, it's easier to make the comic-book sketch version of Tony Stark (playboy, genius inventor, businessman, weapons manufacturer who has second thoughts, alcoholic) into as relatively complex and textured a character as RDJ's version has become. To do the same to villains requires making them at least somewhat sympathetic and requires motivations that we can appreciate to some degree--or it requires villains who are essentially not characters but things (disasters, catastrophes, inanimate objects, etc.)

Villains who are rivalrous to heroes for some personal reason are the easiest to handle. Hence it's not that big a surprise that the one MCU success to date is Loki. Sibling rivalry is a classic motivation, and a good actor can give it all sorts of sympathy and nuance.

Doom is in that category if he's written well--the second-smartest guy on the planet but who has also had to overcome way, way more in getting that far than the smartest guy has, which makes his resentment over what seems like a helpful gesture (Richards correcting his figures for a dangerous experiment) more understandable. But that's problem #2 with good movie comic-book villains. In the last twenty years, we've discovered that some villains might be so sympathetic as to not be particularly villainous. Once you make Magneto both a Holocaust survivor AND someone with a legitimate philosophical disagreement with Professor X, then making him the villain either requires the filmmakers to genuinely disagree with the villain's ideology while also seeing it as something people could actually side with (a hard balance to strike) or it requires the villain to have a hidden personal flaw that the ideology is just a blustering cover for. First Class did a pretty good job with that--Magneto's desire for power in the end isn't just disagreement with Xavier about the right way forward, it's also an inability to get beyond his own suffering and self-pity. If you get the balance wrong, the hero starts to seem like a bully and the villain like a victim.

I think there are *very* few classic villains in either Marvel or DC that have this kind of potential. It's why we keep coming back to Doom and Magneto as examples. If you're going with even MCU-type realism, "conquering the world" just starts to seem kind of stupid as an ambition for a single person (this is Apocalypse's problem) but at the same time, inventing an amazing technology or gaining a power and just trying to be slightly more rich or powerful also seems stupid. (There's an old Flash story that's kind of fun along these lines where the Rogues get together and talk about how idiotic they are for robbing banks and committing small crimes when they have technologies that could change the world and make them billions--but some of them ruefully agree it's because they're compulsive small-timers who don't understand how to think differently.) 

The only other way to go is "mythic evil"--a kind of evil that's totally beyond the frame of human understanding and motivation. Age of Ultron flirted with that, but didn't really do it. If Darkseid is a JL villain in the future, I suppose that could work. But you can see how weak it is as a storytelling approach when you watch Thor: Dark World. Malekith is one of those mythic "force of nature" evils--he just wants to end creation because, I dunno, his people used to rule the universe or whatever. He's boring as a result, a kind of weak "I will have revenge for my people" combined with "there is a comet heading for Earth" sort of threat. There's no emotion in it, nothing to relate to or even hate, but also nothing of the grandeur of scale required to make him meaningful. I have a bad feeling that Thanos might end up the same way. 

Well that IS what Thanos is, a poor mans Darkseid.



Ultimately who has which villain is again moot, it's purely about execution of concept, not the concept itself. The DCAU made me give a shit about characters like Blue Beetle, Huntress and The Question. It made me think Hawkgirl was awesome, or that Martian Manhunter wasn't just a random assortment of powers but an actual character.


Like shit, before the 'twist' the MCU made me buy into the Mandarin as a credible and terrifying villain. Before that portrayal he was nothing more then a racist caricature.

Don't worry if they ever produce a real Mandarin he'll probably be a white female or young black guy.

I sort of assumed they were going with a "ten rings" approach for the 'real' Mandarin, as per the hint in Iron Man 1. E.g., he's not one guy, he's ten people, a conspiratorial cell of some kind.

I was thinking on this and realized why there's no emotion to it. You know that it's never going to happen. The good guys will always win, the bad guy will be defeated, even if it's not in this movie. Any downbeat is just a cliffhanger until the next. There's no stakes in play that can give you the the kind of terror a removed-from-humanity 'force of nature' evil should invoke.

To see that sort of pathos play in film, you need to look at good horror movies. The unrelenting otherness of a good, horrific villain. The terror of knowing you didn't really win, you just survived and not as the person you once were. That can't happen with tights-types. Certainly not on the back of a multi-billion-dollar franchise.  

The one-shot they made was to let us know there was a real Mandarin and he didn't like the whole impostor thing.

Sure, but that could be "they" didn't like the whole thing.

-------------

As far as "it's never going to happen", that was the brilliance of Grant Morrison's first Darkseid story--he took the JLA into the future to show what it would be like if Darkseid did come to Earth fully ready to conquer it, and managed to be convincing that it would be in a great many ways worse than anything any ordinary supervillain could conjure up. I don't think anybody, including Kirby, had really done that with the character or concept before. I actually think Snyder is sort of vaguely trying to do that in BvS but he utterly lacks the ability to pull it off. As I suspect Singer does as well in this upcoming X-Men flick.

Zod in Man of Steel was an excellent villain type. His motivation was personal and di not bear any direct animus towards humans. He was just the director of forces that would have extinguished humans as a side effect of his goals. This made him understandable without requiring audience sympathy.

Speaking of Darkseid, I need help finding one certain appearance of Darkseid. So in this appearance there's a bunch of heroes standing around at what looks like a picnic or something like that. THey notice one of the characters isn't around and they don't know where she went. This character was a girl 10-14 years old maybe and had some sort of superpowers. I vaguely remember everyone hating her as a new character and complaining that she was a some writer's daughter/waifu insert. Anyway, the heroes all scramble for a search party because a prepubescent girl is missing. Like two seconds later they find her behind some buches talking with Darkseid. It turns out she was sad because people were scared of her and treated her differently because of her powers. She just happened to run into Darkseid behind those bushes and not realizing who he was started talking to her. Darkseid told her that everyone else should FOAD, if they're weirded out by her it's their problem not hers. After talking to Darkseid she was much happier and all the heroes were like "WTF?". While everyone was standing around Darkseid took a boom tube someplace else, maybe a different bush someplace else. If anyone has any idea what book that was in you'll be solving one of the most haunting mysteries in my adult life. I'm almost to the point of getting a list of every Darkseid appearance after 1990 and looking at them one at a time.


I thought this was the one redeeming thing in The Fifth Wave. Liev Schreiber as the local leader of the invading alien force in his speech towards the end. "You guys didn't 'do' anything to deserve this except happen to live on a planet we want for ourselves." Otherwise everything else in it was pretty bad.

Racking my brains on the Darkseid thing. Can't think of where that's from. Almost sounds like the really bad Mary Sue character Faith, who appeared briefly in Justice League in the early 2000s, but I don't think there was a scene like that.

I went to go see this at the premiere (in an almost empty theater) and this was an enjoyable flick as far as X-Men movies can be enjoyable. It's reasonably long but I wasn't bored.

They could maybe have done a better job with Apocalypse himself and some actors were phoning it in (Lawrence) but on the whole I thought it was better than Days of Future Past, which I recently rewatched.

That's somewhat encouraging at least. I enjoyed DOFP in the theater, though I haven't had the urge to rewatch.

This was fairly mediocre. Apokalypse never felt threatening, just like a guy walking around with some gang. The story was too disjointed and suffered from having too many pieces on the board, you never cared about any of them except Magneto. Maybe a whiff for Jean & Scott but not much.


It's not one I'll rewatch on TV the way I have First Class. I don't regret spending a few hours this afternoon watching it, but I'd have been equally happy lazing about the house instead.

Yeah, this movie is not getting very good reviews.  May not even bother going to see it.

A shame, since I thought DoFP was great.

On the bad side of mediocre for consistency with prior films (changing the time line should not change Angel's age), writing, and acting. A lot of phoning it in, especially from Lawrence. Too much fan service crammed into the movie. The spectacles were fun to watch, but they did not serve the story well. It could have been a lot better if they crammed in less and made more of what they kept.

Ok so I actually enjoyed this movie. No hugely overdone action sequence in the middle (looking at you avengers 2) . Cpl of laughs. Sansa Stark being not always annoying.  Quicksilver bit was excellent as always.

Yeah, the thing with Angel  kind of lost me a bit too.  And the fact that for what I assume was purely fanservice purposes Psylocke was the only one of the 4 horsemen that didnt get a set of Apocalypse brand custom body armor.   The rest of it was pretty decent, though I agree with the phoned in seeming acting.   Magneto's bit in the factory just after Apocalypse arrives literally made me wince.

Also, can anybody tell me exactly what was up with the End Credits scene?  I thought I was relatively familiar with most of the X-Men stuff,  but that one left me completely stumped.

My sisters went to see it today and they thought it sucked. No more details.

End Credits More Info:

Saw it last night. It wasn't bad, but not great either. Way too much going on with too many characters, and unlike Shannow I think it could have used another action scene or two.

Saw it today and it was alright but nothing spectacular.  Like others have mentioned, JLaw seemed to have phoned in her performance while the rest of the cast ranged from forgettable (Cyclops) to OK (Jean Grey, Nightcrawler) to awesome (Quicksilver).  I really want them to make a movie with much, much more Quicksilver in it. :heart:  Something else I noticed was that they only gave Olivia Munn like 4 lines of dialogue as Psylocke with her then spending the rest of the movie standing around in her skimpy costume.  I wonder why that was? :awesome_for_real:

Because Psylocke is a bland character only good for T&A?  :awesome_for_real:

Quicksilver's mansion scene felt a little dragged-out. It was good, but not nearly as good as the fight scene from the previous movie. I can't decide 100% if that's because the novelty isn't there anymore, or because the choreography wasn't as good since there were too many vignettes where all he did was run fast. It wasn't until the couple on the roof that it got good with the wacky "oh, that's how he's setting things up," of the first film.

I thought this was good, and I thought Oscar Isaac did good with what he had but goddamn there were WAY too many mutants. None of the horsemen but Magneto got any character development (and Magneto got really too much because after 6 movies, WE KNOW WHO HE IS). JLaw's presence as Mystique was really just jarring because if you've seen the other films you keep trying to figure out how this ties into them. And yes, that's despite the time reset/reboot from DoFP because none of THAT is explained at all. Psylocke, Angel and Storm are completely wasted and the Apocalypse power levels were so over the top but without a good battle scene to pay that off (the last scene with him is a bit short on action).

In the long run, I think the reset to the cast was a good thing but the reset to the time line so that this was set in 1983 was a mistake for the franchise, especially if they are going to try to tie it in to Deadpool and the upcoming possible X-Force/Cable thing. Magento will be something like 82 by that time, Jean Grey/Cyclops will be in their late 40's so at this point you HAVE to make all the next films period pieces and Deadpool clearly isn't.

Also,

Mr Sinister is the worst villain name since Snidely Whiplash.

Well if we are lucky, they will go the same route they did with name dropping Apocalypse when they do Sinister.    Apoc never really ever refers to himself as so, so maybe when they do Sinister, it will be something like:

CharacterA:  We have disccovered that this Essexx guy has been doing all sorts of evil genetic experiments trying to custom make his own perfect bulid-a-mutant!
CharacterB:  Well shit, that's just down right Sinister. (wink / nod at the audience)

I think we can all agree that Quicksliver had the best scene in the movie (just as in DOFP).

Just saw it - movie was decent, not a train wreck, but not quite up to MCU-quality by and large. Quicksilver scene was again probably the best in the movie (character has always been a favorite for me), while Psylocke has about 3 lines as Haemish indicated and is overall pointless. So was Angel. Storm was mildly impactful, while Magneto had a big part to no one's surprise. Mystique was important, but the acting was forgettable. Apocalypse needed to showcase more power overall.

I think it was just tying into the narrative of the "new timeline" showing HOW he escaped. I would say it was leading into the first movie but that one never happened now?

The biggest issue was that amazing opening scene made the rest of the movie look bad.  Specially the four horsemen, damn those guys were bad ass.  In the few seconds we saw them in action they made a bigger impression than Angel, Psylocke and Storm did the rest of the movie.

Yeah, this bugged me too. It seemed like he was content to have the first four mutants he ran into be his elite bodyguards and lieutenants. I haven't read an X book in 20 years and I can name a dozen better choices for the Angel and Psylocke spots.

About the spoiler: all indications point to "yes."

Saw it in 3D (not worth the extra $) but enjoyed it overall. It is certainly the worst of the 3, just like X3 was the worst of its 3, but I still enjoyed them all. While I understand the issues with Styker's age consistency, I liked the tie back. Sansa Stark did fine as Jean Grey but she doesn't have optimal the look I have in my head from reading the comics as a kid. Neither did Famke though.

The change in JLaw's aura (for lack of a better word) from First Class to Apoc was quite striking. I don't know if it was makeup, lighting or just superstar actress strut but she just stood out.  She was JLaw playing a role instead of Mystique. Fail on her part.

I agree on the weakness of the new Four Horsemen vs the old but Apoc had to work with what was available. It would have certainly be sufficient had Magneto and Storm no turned.

Love the new Storm.

Given what we know of the foe for the next film... Ugh.  I'm not optimistic.  I would not be surprised if the movie starts a downward trend like we saw with Amazing Spider-man.

Here's hoping for a giant coordinated reboot in 2020 with all the rights in one set of hands.

Based on the grosses for this one through 2 weeks, it's following the same box office trend as Spider-Man as well. $400 million worldwide vs. the $700+ million worldwide of DoFP.

Watched this. Half the mutants were pointless. Effects were fine. I give it a 5 out of 10.

I didn't need to watch the movie, glad i didn't pay to see it when i saw it.

I was laughing my ass off when saw polish factory full off strong men from some pop clips.
But I must say most of the quotes was understandable.