With the Marvel Cinematic Universe as ubiquitous as it is,
it can be easy to forget just how important the X-Men films have been for the
common conception of comic book movies. At the start of the millennium, the
genre was in a pretty bad state: Vanguards of the art form Superman and Batman
had both fallen on legendarily bad times, the kitschy ways of the 80’s were sticking
around for god knows what reason like with Captain America and the unreleased
Fantastic Four film, and to make matters worse, we weren’t even getting that
many of them that were worth noting. Blade was pretty much the one and only
comic book superhero film that was watchable. And then noted filmmaker Bryan
Singer teamed up with Solid Snake (seriously, the OG voice actor for Solid
Snake wrote it) and up-and-coming actor Hugh Jackman to make history for the
format. Pushing the surface badassery of Blade into mainstream-recognised
maturity, it changed the landscape from then on; it set the groundwork that the
MCU went on to flesh out. No question, even in the wake of negative reviews, I
was looking forward to the next instalment in this legendary series,
especially given how amazingly well Days Of Future Past turned out. This is
X-Men: Apocalypse.
