Few movie franchises (outside of a few horror series that won't go away) boast eight big-budget summer releases that have kept the series on track for sixteen years, with an average Rotten Tomatoes score of 74% and average box office north of $475 million. With $3.8 billion in global box office and $750+ million in domestic home entertainment sales and rentals of the first seven movies (foreign sales and rentals push worldwide Blu-ray/DVD/Digital-HD past $1 billion to date), the X-Men are among the most lucrative franchises in history. Already, Deadpool has 1 million digital sales in a single week -- the most for any Fox movie in history. These facts speak to the quality and popularity of the X-Men movies, and after X-Men: Days of Future Past topped $747 million worldwide last year, expectations are high for the series' ninth chapter, this summer's X-Men: Apocalypse.
Before I get into how the film does and doesn't live up to all expectations, let's consider the overall historical significance of the X-Men and look at the financial picture. For newcomers, here is a quick list of all nine films in the X-Men world so far, including release dates and their global box office tallies:
- X-Men (2000) -- $296.3 million
- X2: X-Men United (2003) -- $407.7 million
- X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) -- $459.3 million
- X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) -- $373 million
- X-Men: First Class (2011) -- $353.6 million
- The Wolverine (2013) -- $414.8 million
- X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) -- $747.8 million
- Deadpool (2016) -- $762.1 million
- X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) -- ?
As you can see from the above data, the overall trend for the X-Men franchise was ever-increasing box office through the first three films, followed by a two-film decline( largely attributed to the fact Origins was a B-movie that didn't live up to the higher standards of the series, and the fact Origins caused a hangover for First Class, which also lacked the draw of the original cast), and then a reversal that saw three increases in a row again. Adjusted for inflation, the first six movies in the series except First Class performed at the equivalent of $400-500 million in today's dollars, making them more lucrative than might appear at first glance. They also all enjoyed very strong home releases, often being among the most successful movies on Blu-ray/DVD/Digital-HD in their respective years.
Fox's series has period-piece movies set during historical events, a grounded world around the heroes to provide a sense of realism as a backdrop for the fantastical elements, different tonal approaches for films like The Last Stand and Deadpool, proving there's room to experiment and apply different superhero movie styles to this X-Men world, attention to character and relationships over plotting and action, and recurring social commentary making the films feel more relevant. This, then, is a large superhero world full of many different characters who frequently team up, laying a lot of the early groundwork for the eventual rise of Marvel's shared cinematic universe at Marvel Studios, while also giving audiences a "realistic, grittier" version of comic superheroes in a way that predated the Dark Knight trilogy.
Be warned, from here forward, I will mention a few minor spoilers -- all of which you see in the trailers, but since they technically count as spoilers I should give you a chance to look away...
With a Deadpool sequel coming soon and starring Cable (who needs to be played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, but I'll have more to say about that in another article coming up soon), and with Hugh Jackman's final outing as Wolverine hitting the big screen in 2017 (and probably being some sort of loose adaptation of the comic book story Old Man Logan, in the way The Wolverine was a loose adaptation of the Chris Claremont-Frank Miller Wolverine comic limited series), it seems the X-Men lineup we've known and loved for the last 16 years is probably coming to an end. There's a good chance the next team movie in the series will actually be X-Men: The New Mutants, or an X-Force movie, whichever gets into production and reaches the screen first. The 1990s time setting for the next movie points toward one of those two being the likely candidate. (There are other hints that suggest a regular X-Men team movie is also coming, but I'll talk about that a little further down in this piece).
Which makes X-Men: Apocalypse a possible (temporary) sendoff for the current batch of mutant heroes. Fox hasn't promoted it as such, though, so any potential box office boost the film might've enjoyed from that particular framing is moot. What's not moot, though, is that the film features some of the cast from Days of Future Past, returning as characters audiences are familiar with, and the trailers finally admitted what we knew all along anyway -- yes, Wolverine is in the movie. It won't say how much, but it's more than just a quick cameo shot and less than a true supporting character role throughout the film. However, most mainstream viewers will only see the trailers, so if they miss that shot of the clawed hand in the trailer, then they won't necessarily realize Wolverine shows up, and that could dampen any must-see status for the film unless/until he gets a higher profile in the trailers.
If Fox promoted this as a follow-up of Days of Future Past, and that it could be the final outing for the team (for example: "History changed... but not necessarily for the better! See the X-Men in what could be their final movie mission!" or something like that) and then promoted Wolverine's reveal more heavily in the marketing, then those selling points plus the other trailers and images from the film would surely give it a major boost on opening weekend. And it'll need it, with early reviews split down the middle for a 50% Rotten Tomatoes score so far. It needs to top 58%, otherwise it'll be the second-worst reviewed film of the franchise, ahead of only X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
There's still time to go with marketing that highlights Wolverine's presence and suggests this might be the last time we'll see this particular lineup on screen for a while (until the next soft reboot, maybe something after X-Force is up and running, so time passes and makes it easier to recast all of the roles again and jump into modern times as opposed to period piece settings). Since Captain America: Civil War is doing gangbuster business (it already topped $700+ million on Monday, and should approach $1 billion this coming weekend or early next week), the red-and-white Marvel brand logo should also feature prominently in the X-Men ads over the next few weeks, as should shots of the various mutants doing battle with their powers on full display -- this is, after all, the year of "superheroes fighting superheroes," right?
Riding that wave shouldn't be too hard, and a $100 million opening domestic weekend should be in the cards, as long as the critical reviews and early screenings word of mouth aren't so negative they override the marketing's ability to sell it as a must-see superhero event picture.
From there, all will depend on how audiences respond to a story that spends most of its time introducing each character and placing them on one side of the battlefield or the other, and which repeats a lot of narrative arcs viewers have become so familiar with over the course of the previous seven movies (more on that shortly, though). There's less of the pleasing action set-piece spectacles and sense of sheer fun and humor found in Days of Future Past, and a lot of the cast are new faces audiences won't recognize, so if the marketing doesn't overcome those things and if the word of mouth isn't good enough, then X-Men: Apocalypse could find itself falling back into the $400+ million worldwide box office range the franchise seemed stuck in for the first six outings until Days of Future Past helped it break through to the next tier where it seemed to always belong.
On the higher end of potential performance, I'm guessing the current ceiling of the X-Men world is somewhere in the $700-800 million range for the best entries, and $500 million for what passes as "average" quality range for this franchise (which is still usually actually higher quality than most films). I don't see any X-Men movie climbing north of $800 million at most, until they get Deadpool and Wolverine on screen together in a big team movie that's as great and fun as Deadpool and Days of Future Past combined. However, I don't expect Apocalypse to hit the $800 million bar. My high-end prediction would be perhaps $700+ million, and I'll be very surprised if it matched the box office of Days of Future Past or Deadpool.
But on the lower end of estimates, the basement for X-Men: Apocalypse -- and for the series in general right now -- in the wake of Days of Future Past, Deadpool, and the built-in selling power of the Marvel logo, is probably $450-500 million. I can't imagine a scenario that sees Apocalypse grossing less than $500 million, since worldwide opening weekend numbers alone should get the film to the $250-300 million range, so a low 2x multiplier would see it through to a minimum of $500+ million. The fact the built-in X-Men movie fanbase has consistently kept the films pretty firmly within the $400-500 million range even when it wasn't otherwise expanding its audience is a good sign the basement is somewhere in that territory no matter how bad the reviews and word of mouth turns out to be. And while reviews are definitely mixed, it's not close to the panning received by Origins, which still wound up making a decent showing within the franchise's typical range.
I think we're looking at something closer to $600-650 million as the moderate mid-range estimate, just based on sheer momentum and the size of the likely foreign audience, but also taking into account the mixed reactions to the film and the problems it legitimately has (which I'll discuss in depth in the full review shortly). Whether it's closer to $600 million or $650 million depends on how much audience reactions mirror the mixed critical reception, and whether the good will earned for the franchise starts to fade after the first couple of weeks in release.
Foreign receipts will really come to the rescue for Apocalypse, I strongly suspect, since my guess is it will do around $200-210 million domestic and needs a solid $400+ million from international markets in order to cross into $600+ million territory. That will be a clear comedown from Days of Future Past, but it's still a very respectable number and we can't expect indefinite increases where the very best and most successful examples become the yardstick for all success going forward. That's particularly true when Days of Future Past and Deadpool enjoyed such overwhelming critical acclaim and audience love, while Apocalypse has a steeper hill to climb. Should it top $650+ million, that'll be even better, of course. And if it manages to finish in the $700+ million range -- a definite possibility -- it will unquestionably be an enormous success without any need for talk of "underperforming" even if it doesn't top Days of Future Past or Deadpool.
Okay, enough history lessons and financial what-ifs. What makes X-Men: Apocalypse a mixed bag? What works, what doesn't, and which side of the "see it" or "don't" equation does it land in? Read on and find out, dear readers!
Let's set some parameters for this discussion right off the bat -- X-Men: Days of Future Past and X2 are the best of the series so far, both being 5-star films; X-Men Origins: Wolverine was the worst, perhaps a 2.5-star entry. X-Men: Apocalypse sits right in the middle range, a 3-star movie that has more characterization and emotional drama than X-Men: The Last Stand but not as much fun and coherent action, nor as straightforward or interesting an actual story and villainous plan. The result is not dissimilar to the very first X-Men film, which spent most of its time introducing characters and letting them interact, while the climax was a tad muddled and not quite compelling enough. But that movie had a stronger villain with a plan based on a real idea and worldview beyond "destroy things and be an evil ruler." It also didn't feel like the climax droned on too long. And most important of all, it wasn't largely dominated by themes and pacing we'd seen over and over already in the series.
So take X-Men from 2000, imagine it coming now after we've seen eight previous X-Men movies, make Magneto less compelling and make his plan simply "destroy the world and then rule mutants as a God," drag out the climax in a lot of messy, cluttered CGI, but then also linger over good character personalities and fun interactions with a nice sense humor, and you start to get a sense of what Apocalypse feels like.
I'll lay out the flaws first, so that I can give you my "yes, but" analysis of why the film still winds up with more good than bad parts, and thus is neither as good as it should've been nor a huge disappointment that fails to fit into the franchise. It's right in the middle, a mostly good but admittedly flawed film that keeps the franchise alive but doesn't really move it forward or offer anything substantially new.
X-Men, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and X-Men: First Class were all straight-up origin films, the latter being a soft reboot. Then, X-Men: Days of Future Past was intended to reboot the timeline further, to allow new films to ignore the previous stories and build something new. Now, X-Men: Apocalypse gives us yet another origin story for individuals and the team of superheroes.
Likewise, we saw Magneto doing the "will he or won't he" game -- bouncing between villain and hero, winding up settled mostly into recurring antihero mode -- in X2, First Class, and Days of Future Past. He repeats that general arc yet again in Apocalypse. And the biggest problem is, we hear pretty much the exact same speeches and arguments between Magneto and Xavier every single time, with Xavier's position being summed up as "I know there's good in you, I can feel it, you have to have faith in humanity" (which he actually says almost verbatim every time). Each time, Magneto seems to rethink his darker tendencies, Xavier seems to have reached him, and then they revert right back to the same dance again next time.
This recent trend toward repeating the reboot/origin template dominated by Xavier-Magneto arguments as the dominant emotional arc has become not only repetitive but pointless. It means we can't trust whatever happens in a film, because the next film might just be another do-over and wherever Xavier, the team, and Magneto left off last time doesn't tell us much after all. The emotional stakes become lowered, because we've seen it before and can't count on it to resonate in future stories.
But it doesn't even stop there. There's also Mystique to consider, who has also been turned into a sort of "will she or won't she" antihero in each film, on the run and torn between her outsider claim "I'm not a hero, I'm not a team member" and her quick resort to heroics as a team member each time. In First Class, then in Days of Future Past, and now again in Apocalypse, her character arc has been a repetition and has undermined her prior roles in the series as someone who's darker nature tends to win out most of the time. Add this, then, to the problem of perpetual origin-stories, timeline rebooting, and Xavier-Magneto repetitiveness, and the series seems unsure where else to go.
Which is a shame, because the soft reboot of First Class was a terrific idea, and Days of Future Past was definitely the definitive X-Men movie to date. That one-two punch established a new team of actors and characters, and reset the timeline to allow an "anything goes" approach to planning the series future. And when we heard we'd get a 1980s period piece for Apocalypse, things sounded on track, especially after we got word of a mall sequence, where the characters take Nightcrawler on his first trip to the pop culture cathedrals of 80s youth.
It's clear that some of what's desired for the X-Men franchise is to veer more toward a comic book approach akin to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, complete with colorful costumes, more fantasy elements, and healthy inspiration from the iconic 1990s cartoon series. Those are all absolutely great ideas and an excellent path forward for the series in the modern age of superhero cinema. After all, the X-Men movies started out before the current era had even begun, with the first four films releasing between 2000 (which predated even the first Spider-Man movies) and 2009 (just one year after Marvel Studios kicked off their plan with Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, and the MCU wasn't yet a sure-fire success). Even First Class came out before the post-Avengers era of superhero cinema, so we still weren't sure whether Marvel's gamble would pay off the way they hoped, and Nolan was still in the midst of his Batman series.
So Days of Future Past was the first X-Men entry to benefit fully from the golden age of superhero cinema, getting a boost from the genre's skyrocketing global popularity and the instant recognition granted by the Marvel brand logo (which features prominently in the X-Men movies, remember, despite these films not being related to the MCU at all). And it cleared the field for the franchise with big, summer-popcorn-spectacle fun. Now it was time to deliver on the promise of an X-Men reimagined for the modern superhero genre. That's what we all expected from Apocalypse, and it seemed ready to deliver the goods, based on the early images, the trailers, the costumes, and word of certain fun scenes like the mall excursion.
However, the final result instead leans too heavily on the preexisting template discussed above. It leaves out most of the superhero costumes we waited for, opting for more black leatherish flight suits for the good guys. It left out the scenes of the young team members hanging out together in the regular world at the mall, shopping in a record store -- yes, someone somehow thought THAT scene needed to be cut from the theatrical release. And it leaves out a fun, unique ending approach in favor of busy CGI footage of stuff breaking, "9/11 dust," and an odd visual aesthetic of debris arching through the sky for no discernible reason.
The climactic fight doesn't have much of anything to it beyond punches, debris flung around, and bright colors shooting out of people's hands. Worst of all, it goes on far too long, particularly scenes of Xavier arguing with Apocalypse, Mystique arguing with Magneto (whose specific purpose was never really clear, there's mention but what he actually winds up doing on screen doesn't have much lingering effect and seems more intended to have him get out of the way and hover for a while), and too many shots of debris floating or flying around while team members on either side sometimes seem to stand on the sidelines for no reason, waiting for a scene to give them a chance to do something again.
There's also a big problem with Apocalypse, because early on he is so overpowered that the final battle is one frustrating moment after another. The guy was waving his hands and causing people and buildings to instantly turn to dust and blow away in the wind. He was able, all on his own, to break down buildings and structures to remodel them into whatever he wanted. So what exactly does he need other people's powers for? And why, when he's fighting off the X-Men, does he keep merely pushing them away with "the Force" so to speak, or throwing debris at them?
You can't start off with your villain seeming capable of almost anything he wishes, then turn him into a big muscle-using guy who tosses people around for 30 minutes at the end. It can't be that he was trying to avoid killing Mutants, because in fact he does try to kill them many times. It's obvious that he is just being held back because the story requires it -- meaning the story shouldn't have overpowered him to begin with, or should've overtly shown that he used too much power earlier and needs to "recharge" at the end.
There are still several good and even great moments during the last act, but overall it fails to live up to what came earlier in the film and doesn't even deliver the sort of exciting visual spectacle that could at least serve as eye candy to make up for lacking a more substantive climax. The (no pun intended) muted colors, general messiness and business of the debris-and-dust imagery, and lack of many entertaining fight moments undermine any attempt at visual spectacle, so as eye candy it isn't very tasty after all.
Now, I realize that's a lot of negative complaints, but on the other hand X-Men: Apocalypse has many characters we've grown to know and love through several films. And even if they repeat themselves too much here, these are relationships that feel real and have earned a little repetition. After all, don't we know family or friends with whom we've had the same recurring debates and conflicts in our lives, even if we sometimes manage to reach temporary truces? That doesn't mean I want to watch Magneto and Xavier fight about it again, but the familiarity and shorthand way they speak of these things at least feels true to them and reflects the people and emotions I expect from them. It helps that this time around, the film seems actually aware of the repetition, so most of the real screen time is devoted to the new faces and how they deal with their introduction to the Magneto-Xavier conflict.
If the last act is dominated by the flaws, the first act is pretty terrific and seems to be setting the stage for a wonderful new youthful X-Men team. Sure, it's a team origin again, but it's origins of the main team and its done in a different way than the first gathering of the original team. And much of it allows the young mutants to meet and talk and figure one another out.
There are terrific underground mutant clubs and communities, spread out across the world and taking on various cultural differences. We see the above-ground, public school for mutants in one place, the secret and illegal gathering places for mutants who are on the run from more oppressive states, and the mutants living among ordinary people who treat their mutant friends as idols to look up to. So the sense of a larger world coming to grips in many different ways from the realization superhumans walk among us, in the aftermath of the 1970s story of Days of Future Past, is done very well.
The second act, while not quite as character-driven as the first, is still very fun and has only a few minor stumbles. It ramps up the action, and takes us to Wolverine's appearance, which is among the best action sequences of the film (another being Quicksilver's obligatory slo-mo rescue scene that admittedly is mostly just a callback to his amazing moment in Days of Future Past but is nonetheless still fun to watch and looks spectacular). Everything builds from there toward the real climax of the story, the moment when the X-Men team must confront Apocalypse and try to rescue a certain fellow mutant, and all of this buildup more or less works. It's only when we get to the final showdown that the flaws really drag the proceedings down and the story starts to disappoint in significant ways.
The performances are all good, a few being stellar -- Nightcrawler is a real standout, and Storm is excellent in her earlier scenes until she suddenly stops being given any lines or much to do. I also really like Scott and Jean, they feel like kids who desperately need to feel they belong and whose powers are a metaphor -- which is always the best portrayal of mutants and their powers in this series, for my money. The returning cast are all their usual great selves, albeit sometimes lacking the same energy they brought to the previous movies. Apocalypse has so much potential, and early on he's really interesting and cool, but it gets to be too predictable and then during the climax he just doesn't deliver on the promise at all.
When the story is focused on the characters and keeping the action to smaller bites that set up introductions and personal reactions, it's mostly what you probably want from a new "young X-Men and how they all became the team you've grown to love" movie. The few stumbles in the first hour and forty-five minutes are minor enough that, had the climax lived up to the earlier acts, it would be a far more popular and better received movie.
Some of you will hate the last half hour, some will feel mostly indifferent toward it, and a few will probably not mind it or might even enjoy it a lot. The more you like the first hour and forty-five minutes, and the more you can tolerate the messy final act by just waiting through it to get to the final scene, the more you'll enjoy this movie. But the more you're bothered by drawn out, CGI-heavy uber-battles in superhero films, and the more the repetition of it all distracts you, the harder it will admittedly be for you to forgive the film these flaws.
This is surely another case of the cutting room floor having all of the extra pieces that would make Apocalypse a far better film, and I can't wait for the Blu-ray that restores the missing mall sequence and some other character moments. It's not even hard for me to imagine an edit of the movie that solves most of the problems. In truth, at least ten minutes or more of the final act could be removed, as could a few earlier scenes, to get the film down to well under two and a half hours in length, making it easy to put the mall scene and a few other little moments back in. It would be a faster paced, much more fun movie that way.
As it stands, however, it is a film with much promise that it cannot quite live up to. It isn't the worst X-Men movie by a long shot, and I'm surprised so many reviews say it is. It's better than Origins, better than The Last Stand, and actually almost (but not quite) on par with the first X-Men outing (a film I like, but which over time has been surpassed by most of the rest of the series, in my estimation). It's a 3-star movie, with potential to have earned 3.5 stars if not for some glaring mistakes and editing issues. I don't think it had the components to get higher than 3.5 stars, though, so it was always destined to sit behind Days of Future Past, X2, First Class, Deadpool, and The Wolverine. With the changes and edits I mention, it could've possibly been tied with The Wolverine for positioning on my own ranking of the series, but I'm not positive of that.
The key is, X-Men is a great series, so even a mid-range average entry is still entertaining. I think a lot of the criticisms of this film feel a little extreme and hyperbolic, and are perhaps a problem of perception -- Captain America: Civil War is so damn good, and our expectations of the genre so heightened, that a film like X-Men: Apocalypse gets trashed and called the worst of the franchise or a total failure when a few years ago it would've probably been perceived as an average, acceptable but not great entry in the genre. Our ability to recognize and judge average fare is, I fear, atrophying and our tendency toward "it's great or it's awful, it's the best or the worst" judgments leave no room for anything in between. Maybe I'm mistaken, but looking at the field of critical analysis lately, it sure seems to lack a measured and balanced eye for anything existing outside of narrow pass/fail parameters.
There's something to be said for feeling frustrated at a movie failing to live up to great potential, especially in a franchise as strong as X-Men. And there was surely enough top talent involved in this film to have gotten things more right more often. But I personally try to weigh those considerations on one hand, and then weigh the film purely on its merits, and then see how each assessment affects the other. In that way, I can recognize the many problems with X-Men: Apocalypse without those flaws blinding me to how much it did well and how much it got right.
The climax does come close to spoiling a large portion of my enthusiasm during the earlier acts, but luckily that doesn't quite happen and so I am left feeling I want to see it again in the hopes the parts I like will stand out more and my complaints and disappointments will recede a bit. Meanwhile, I'll look forward to the eventual home entertainment release that will hopefully deliver more of what made the film work in its best moments.
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