X-Men: Apocalypse

Let's be honest: X-Men: Apocalypse is not a film without its problems. I would struggle to discuss it in any great detail without reeling off a catalogue of poor directorial choices, script nonsenses or examples of bad acting. It is certainly the least good of Bryan Singer's four X-Men films to date, and I actually spent some time deciding whether or not it was better than X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which - as we all know - is not nearly as terrible as you all say it is. What Apocalypse is, though, is knowingly camp, occasionally bold and - at the very least - well-intentioned, even if its intentions are frequently crushed to smithereens under the weight of its own hubris. And if you ask me, which I'm afraid you already have by virtue of reading this far, it's still better than First Class.

After a satisfyingly exhausting unpicking and rethreading of the X-Men universe's chronology in Days Of Future Past, Singer and writer Simon Kinberg have opted for the easy way here: big bad guy threatens human extinction, recruits bad mutants to his cause, good mutants fight back. It's not big and it's not clever, but it is a lot of fun: the pre-title scene alone features some spectacular Cairo-based carnage which sets the tone for the FX-heavy two and a bit hours that follow, and while some of it is kind of baffling, none of it is boring - and certainly not the opening titles, which play out like the complete history of mankind as recalled by a hyperactive child who was once shown a picture of the Mona Lisa.

Oscar Isaac is thanklessly tasked with the role of Mr Apocalypse (first name not given; possibly Alan), buried under enough blue prosthetics and daft armour to question the wisdom of hiring an actor this good to play what is essentially an angry smurf. Rudely awoken from a millennia-long snooze in 1983, Alan Apocalypse does what we'd all like to do when yanked out of a nice dream and sets off to enslave mankind, recruiting the three most useless mutants he can find along the way and giving them terrible haircuts for reasons best known to himself. Meanwhile, Erik Magneto (Michael Fassbender, still undecided on which accent to plump for) is living happily in Poland until shit goes down that tests his patience to the ruddy limit, rendering him an ideal candidate for the currently vacant position of Fourth Horseman Of Alan.

Meanwhile meanwhile, dozens of other mutants are doing stuff and saying things and noticeably failing to look twenty years older than they did five years ago when they were in the 1962-set First Class. At some point they all get together and have a superpower-off, and that's basically it. I can't defend Apocalypse on the grounds of intelligent, soul-searching, groundbreaking storytelling, but I can defend it on the grounds that a) it doesn't really claim to be any of those things - unlike, say, Batman v Superman - and b) it gleefully rewrites both the history we know (leaving us in a world with no nukes and no Auschwitz) and the series' own internal history, and expects you to keep up with it. It doesn't really take the time to ponder what any of that means, but never mind because OOH LOOK THERE'S WOLVERINE!

The social commentary that marked out Singer's previous X-films is a little thin on the ground here and struggles to make itself heard over all the explosions, but it is there, and even if it amounts to little more than "with great power comes great responsibility", that still seems more admirable to me than pitting heroes against each other for the sake of a lacklustre extended fight sequence. Also to its credit, Apocalypse is at least very funny; I mean sure, the climax is overlong, hideously misjudged in its bloodless slaying of innocents (the removal of a couple of shots of landmark-destruction could have helped) and ill-advisedly quotes Return Of The Jedi (for the second time in the film, in fact), but come on, Nightcrawler wears Michael Jackson's Thriller jacket! What's not to like? Apart from all the things I just said were bad.

Ultimately, whether or not you'll go for X-Men: Apocalypse can probably be ascertained by your reaction to two specific sequences within the film: the first shamelessly rehashes the best scene of Days Of Future Past; the second is a lengthy plot diversion which exists solely to insert an inevitable cameo. Both scenes betray a disappointing lack of originality, but they're also undeniably entertaining, delivering the kind of magic only the X-Men can provide. There are better and worse films, there are better and worse superhero films, there are better and worse X-Men films. In fact there are better and worse films in this current trilogy of X-Men films. But in a series sixteen years and eight movies old (nine if you must insist on including Deadpool), it seems to me you could do a lot worse than produce a new entry that slots somewhere in the middle.

Saturday Playlist #26: X-Men

With X-Men: First Class still bringing home the box office Bacon, it seems like as good a time as any to squirt some X-music into your E-holes.

Each X-Men film has featured a different composer, and the lack of a unifying theme for the series has been something of a disappointment. Where's its Superman march, its Bond theme, its Star Wars fanfare? Nowhere, that's where.

Michael Kamen scored X-Men, tragically being credited as Michael K-Men DO YOU SEE?! on the soundtrack CD, and frankly he did a bit of a shit job: the album is the musical equivalent of a mutant whose power is to make the process of paint drying even duller.

Fortunately John Ottman took over for X2, bringing some serious BAAA, BAAA, BAAAA!! to proceedings, and managed to avoid being credited as 'John Ott-Men'. For X-Men: The Last Stand, John Powell took over, and Harry Gregson-Williams had a go on X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

It fell to Hans Zimmer prodigy Henry (not Hugh) Jackman (not Jack-Men) to score X-Men: First Class, and guess what? He did a FIRST CLASS JOB, ahahaha. Hopefully he'll carry on with any X-prequel-sequels, and, based on this piece of aural loveliness, may even prove a worthy successor to David Arnold should he be unavailable for future Bondery.

Anyway, enough waffle. Time to "X-perience" some "X-citing" "X-amples" of X-Music! I don't know where genius writing like that comes from, honest. I'm just born with it.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO

SATURDAY PLAYLIST #26:

X-MEN

The Incredible Suit Goes All Paxman

I booked tickets recently for a preview of over-punctuated crackersplosion The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans at London's ICA, starring Nicolas Cage's latest hairpiece.



What's arguably more interesting about the screening than Cage's syrup is the fact that it's being arranged by Ultra Culture, the second best movie blog on the internets. At the risk of driving you all away, Ultra Culture really is quite good, and its creator Charlie Lyne irritatingly young and talented.

You may ask what a blog thinks it's doing holding a preview screening, why that screening should be a Nicolas Cage film, what other excitement might occur at the event and if this is a sign of the future of bloggery. If so that's a remarkable coincidence because, in a first for The Incredible Suit, I actually conducted an 'interview' with Charlie and asked him those very things in the style of Jeremy Paxman, which I carried through right to the final question.

What the hell are you playing at? Whoever heard of a blog hosting a preview screening?
I think Ain't It Cool do similar stuff in the States, but this will be significantly better than that because we won't be showing X-Men Origins: Wolverine. I hope. It wouldn't be happening at all if it wasn't for the amazingly undervalued ICA.

Why Bad Lieutenant? It's got Nicolas Cage in it ferchrissakes.
What the hell are you implying? Sir Nicolas of Cage is one of the greatest actors currently living. It sounds like I'm being ironic but I'm very serious about this: he's a genius. And Bad Lieutenant is absolutely phenomenal.

What other activities can we expect to see? Are you organising a game of Pin The Toupee On The Nicolas Cage?
It's all a bit hush-hush (i.e. I haven't thought of most of them) but we have to find the delicate balance between things that are enjoyable and things that people dub 'forced fun'. It'll all have to be very optional. But I'm definitely going to wear an Iguana costume.

Is this the next step on the evolutionary ladder for blogs?
It wouldn't work for everything, but there's definitely something cool about transitioning it to the real world. You can have a look at your audience for a start.

That sounds horrific. What's next in the Ultra Culture plan for world domination?
What would be great is a very big pile of cash. So I'd like to sell out to a major distributor as quickly as humanly possible. You'll know it's happened if I start raving about Dear John next week.

What's your favourite colour?
#b9e344, obv.

The screening is on Wednesday 5th May at 8pm, and tickets may still be available from the ICA on 020 7930 3647. It's 8 quid if you mention Ultra Culture; you can mention The Incredible Suit too if you like but you'll be met with confused silence.

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Cackapoopants

It would appear there’s going to be a new Pirates Of The Caribbean film, subtitled “On Stranger Tides”, walking the plank and shivering me timbers in the summer of 2011. Just so you know I’m not making this up:

Seriously, I couldn’t be less interested in this if it was a six-hour documentary about Shia LaBeouf’s first experience on a potty. Ignoring the fact that the previous Pirates Of The Caribbean films were all cackapoopants, there’s a massive clue as to why On Stranger Tides is destined for nothing more than a 2-star review in Empire and a sound ignoring from The Incredible Suit: it’s the fourth movie in the franchise.

You’d think those dimwits in Hollywood would have worked it out by now. It doesn’t matter how successful, critically or financially, your film series is, if you make a fourth picture it will not be foursome. It will be fourful. Geddit? See what I did there? Oh fourget it.

OK, I know the head honchos at Warner, Fox, Universal and what have you are regular readers of The Incredible Suit, so let me spell it out. Here’s a list of some films that were the fourth to be made in a popular series. First, some of those that were so bad they actually tainted the memory of the first three:

Die Hard 4
Terminator: Salvation
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Star Wars: Episode I (Actually I like it but I’m in a minority. Of one)
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Regular viewers will be only too aware who’s to blame for that)
Thunderball (If you think it’s actually good, go back and watch it again. It’s not)
Alien Resurrection
Superman IV
Batman And Robin
Lethal Weapon 4
Fantastic Four (Not strictly a fourquel but bad enough to be included)

Now, those that were not only good, but actually better than the first three:












So there you have it. Point made. Case rested. QED. Now who’s looking forward to The Hobbit?

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Dead Poo, More Like

Another day, another super-hero film on the way. Today it’s Green Lantern, and the news that’s just parped out is that Ryan Reynolds is to be cast in the title role.

Reynolds does not feature in my book of Bad Actors, but he does appear in my much smaller book of Actors Who’ve Played Characters With Atypical Names. Ryan’s entry in this book includes such gems as Jay ‘Boom’ DeBoom, Bobby Rupp, Paul Nodel, Henry Lipschitz, Captain Excellent, and Kevin. Could it be that Ryan’s choice of characters is based on the fact that his middle name is Rodney? Ryan, I know you’re reading this, let me know.

But I digress. This post is not about Ryan Rodney Reynolds’ daft character monikers, nor is it about the Green Lantern movie, although it’s worth looking forward to because it’s a DC Comics property and it’s directed by Martin Campbell (GoldenEye, Casino Royale). I know precious little about Green Lantern as a character so I’ll leave all that business to sites run by those who know their mustard and are already getting their grundies in a twizzle over the casting of Triple R.

No, this post is about my hope that, because of Reynolds’ new job, the mooted Deadpool movie he was due to star in will be unceremoniously shunted to the arse end of the list of movies to be made in the next century.

For those in the dark, Deadpool was a character in the crapmungous X-Men spin-off X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and was due his own spin-off for no obvious reason, least of all that anybody actually wants to see a Deadpool movie. So this spin-off of a spin-off has hopefully spun off into the spin-dryer of bad ideas, never to spin anywhere again.

I mean really, why bother in the first place? Let’s take a cursory glance at a random selection of all-time classic films featuring characters from other, almost universally better, movies. For the sake of impartiality I’ll include each film’s rating out of 10 according to readers of the Internet Movie Database, my personal bible.

Alien (and Predator) gave us Alien vs. Predator (5.4). Return Of The Jedi gave us Caravan Of Courage: An Ewok Adventure (5.2). Daredevil (which was rubbish enough itself) gave us Elektra (4.9). Batman Returns gave us Catwoman (3.2. Yes, THREE POINT TWO). Furthermore, none of these cinematic turds made nearly as much money as the movie bottoms from whence they came, which is what seems to count far more than mere public opinion.

So, having studied these figures carefully, the powers that be decided that what the world really needs is a spin-off of a spin-off, which brings us back to Deadpool. Let’s hope that it remains unmade because the only benefit to mankind I can envisage would be my capsule review, which would be: “Dead Poo, more like”.