TheRetroCritic

I talk briefly about X-Men: Apocalypse . 80's style!

After director Bryan Singer did his best to introduce Marvel’s team of multi-talented mutants to the world and develop their story further in a superior, if still somewhat restrained, second instalment, he eventually chose to leave the franchise opting for a chance to direct 2006’s  Superman Returns  instead. This was a blow to the series which, after that, underwent several changes in directors and cast members even threatened to leave the franchise. In the end, Brett Ratner, mostly known at the time for giving us the   Rush Hour  movies, took the job and completed a film which had already gone through a lot of messy rewrites. Not an easy feat, in all fairness. X-Men: The Last Stand  is one of those comic-book movie adaptations that gets a handful of things right but drops the ball on 90% of everything else. X-Men  lacked the scale it should have had and its plot revolved around the usual doomsday machine cliché. The sequel provided us with a bigger film, more villains, mor

Back in the day, I was crazy-excited about every X-Men movie release. A fan of the comics, I enjoyed the first film and was certainly looking forward to seeing more of my favourite characters in a sequel. Of course, all this positive anticipation for the franchise ended after (or actually, during) X-Men 3 but that's another story. I had forgotten how much better than the first film this second instalment was. It's ridiculously better. Not amazing or anything but certainly a vast improvement. For one thing, the scale was much more suited to an X-Men film. Also, you had a much better villain with a much better masterplan in Brian Cox's William Stryker with Magneto (Ian McKellen) and Mystique (Rebecca Romijn) given more interesting things to do this time around besides just being one-dimensional douchebags. It's a bit less of a cliched doomsday machine plot in that although Cerebro is a big part of Stryker's plan, it's not really all we get plot-wise from

Post Batman & Robin , back when superhero movies weren't quite as common and quite as expensive as they are today, Marvel decided to take advantage of Batman's irritating demise and kick-start their own rise with the X-Men franchise. Being an X-Fan myself, this was a big deal and, although the result wasn't quite as mind-blowing as I had expected, there was still a lot to enjoy in this first instalment. For one thing, the character introductions were excellent: whether it was Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) cage-fighting or a young Magneto prying open the doors of a concentration camp, the pieces were perfectly set and the show was ready to begin. Only, it doesn't so much begin as it does... go on. This first movie really is just one slow build-up to the X-Men finally becoming a team. And, for the most part, director Bryan Singer does get the characters right: Patrick Stewart makes a spot-on Xavier, Jackman is great (if tall) as Wolverine, Ian McKellen's turn

The rise and fall of the X-Men films sure went quick and fast. Not that the first two were all that perfect but when the messy third came along that was something of a blow. The lacklustre Wolverine Origins prequel followed and pretty much confirmed that the X magic was well and truly...ex magic, So how do you follow a lifeless X-Men prequel? With another of course! The weird thing is that looking at the reviews the film received so far, people liked it! They lapped it up! And here I was facepalming my way through yet another damp squib X-Men film which not only managed to miss the point entirely but delivered what has to be the least interesting X film so far. Lets forget for one second the overall quality of the film and its hit-and-miss links to the other films and the comics: is this honestly the X-Men film we want to see? Who was this made for? Who demanded yet another prequel starring mostly uninteresting mutants doing mostly uninteresting things in the 60's? Will we