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This is post is a cross between an enduring fan perspective, a film review, and how the perceptions of others can deteriorate our enjoyment of things.
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I opened the pages and I was hooked, and for the last 35 years I’ve enjoyed reading, seeing and talking about those merry mutants.
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The first thing I’ve got to say that I’ve been a fan of the X-men comic series since I was a little less than 10 years old. In May 1981 my father and I took a ride to the Molloy’s Pharmacy where he would let me pick out a handful of comics, as he picked up his car and gun magazines. I’d always been partial to the movie or toy tie-ins and the iconic heroes, like Star Wars, The Micronauts and especially Marvel’s take on Godzilla or good old Captain America or the Hulk. Well this one May day I picked up this issue of a book called the Uncanny X-men, issue number #145. Across the cover, Dr. Doom held an unconscious Storm while the other X-men lay at his feet, defeated. I opened the pages and I was hooked, and for the last 35 years I’ve enjoyed reading, seeing and talking about those merry mutants.
In 2000, when Bryan Singer brought my childhood heroes to the silver screen, you couldn’t have met a more content man. The other films in the franchise took a high (X2) and a low (X-men: The Last Stand and X-men Origins: Wolverine ), but I stood by and watched the studio visualize those characters from my youth. Reinvigorating the series in 2011, X-men: First Class and The Wolverine redeemed the last two underwhelming films, with X-men: Days of Future Past and Deadpool also hitting it out of the park.
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If you’re a fan, go see it. Don’t listen to the bandwagon jumpers that didn’t know that comics existed before they hit the silver screen. This is a TRUE comic book brought to life.
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The Story: I admit there is a lot going on in this film. The initial scenes set up some of the Apocalypse backstory, his followers and a vision of future calamity. After our protagonist receives a pyramid tuck in, we flash forward to 1983, 10 years after the events of Days of Future Past and mutants are more in hiding than ever because of the events in Washington. We learn of Raven, Erik and Charles activities and how their lives have changed. Magneto’s fateful decision to be normal is as heartbreaking as the opening moments of 2000’s X-men when he is pulled away from his parents in Auschwitz. Our characters intersect as En Sabah Nur (or Mr. Apocalypse to the plain folks) is reawakened in the totally awesome 80’s, and gathers his Four Horsemen (cudos to Metallica for their 1983 classic Four Horsemen being included) to purge the world of the weak and allow only the strong to survive.
