Post by FQ on May 28, 2016 19:11:34 GMT -5
This is a review of X-Men: Apocalypse and Captain America: Civil War. It is relatively spoiler free.
Let’s pretend for a moment that you can only see one of the two major comic book-to-film adaptations and you want to know which one is worth your money. Each film has characters many of us know and love: be it from your knowledge of comic books or following the cinematic phenomena or some combination of both. I can’t tell you objectively which is better, but I will tell you that my opinion is Captain America: Civil War is far superior.
While both films feature an incredible cast of talented actors, the writing behind X-Men: Apocalypse was sloppy. There was so little engagement with the end of the world that, frankly, I didn’t give a damn one way or another. What they did to Oscar Isaac as Apocalypse basically rendered him a flat character with hardly any facial expression. He is meant to be the most threatening character in the X-Men universe and yet his power was greatly underrepresented. To put it in perspective, the X-Men: Evolution cartoon show spent almost an entire season building up to the arrival of Apocalypse and then only spent four episodes (23 minutes each) actually present. Apocalypse was the mutant that all other mutants aware of his existence feared. It also took nearly every metahuman Xavier had connections to plus SHIELD to take him down.
X-Men: Apocalypse was a hollow shell of the immense storytelling feat that was the Apocalypse story line. The majority of the time was spent establishing a bit of character development for our heroes and supporting foes, but even these weren’t done well. The foes were too easily swayed in what should have been a lot of inner turmoil and skepticism, but instead they joined Apocalypse because of what amounts to parlor tricks and a few new toys. It was all too little, too late for me to care about the characters or what they were going through.
Like many other reviewers across the interwebs, I felt the only character I actually gave a damn about was Quicksilver and his scenes were truly enjoyable.
In contrast, Captain America: Civil War felt like a carefully crafted story composing a masterpiece from the various Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) materials. They even incorporated elements from Agents of SHIELD and yet they managed to keep it relatively self-contained so that you could still follow along if you hadn’t seen every episode (or any). Although each of the Iron Man, Avengers, Thor, and Captain America films that led up to this one have had their strong points as well as flaws, Civil War pulls together the disparate elements of those films into a cohesive narrative.
Furthermore, it managed to tell a story similar to the comic book story it was based on without having to invent new characters and try to hurriedly bring them in. I won’t tell you the details of the comic book differences because it might inadvertently ruin some of the film, but I think fans who are familiar with the Civil War story from the comics will be happy with film even if it is different. It still deals with the central issues brought up in the comic and although the X-Men don’t show up (because Fox still owns the rights to the X-Men cinematic universe), there are plenty of favorites who throw down in this epic conflict.
One character I have some issue with is Vision. In the comics, Vision is more of a machine, much like Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation and he has a fairly dispassionate view of humanity. Vision in the cinematic universe is more just like an alien, more like Martian Manhunter from the DC comics. It may not bother other people as much as it did me, plus Paul Bettany is great in the role so it’s hard to complain. Amazingly, Bettany’s make-up and costuming for Vision is relatively on the same scale as Isaac’s Apocalypse yet they didn’t push Isaac for more from his performance. We already know Isaac is great from The Force Awakens and Ex Machina so I can only assume his performance was largely influenced by the writing and direction.
tl;dr – Go see Captain America: Civil War in theaters and wait for X-Men: Apocalypse to come out on Redbox DVD and Blu-ray or some pay-per-view service.
Let’s pretend for a moment that you can only see one of the two major comic book-to-film adaptations and you want to know which one is worth your money. Each film has characters many of us know and love: be it from your knowledge of comic books or following the cinematic phenomena or some combination of both. I can’t tell you objectively which is better, but I will tell you that my opinion is Captain America: Civil War is far superior.
While both films feature an incredible cast of talented actors, the writing behind X-Men: Apocalypse was sloppy. There was so little engagement with the end of the world that, frankly, I didn’t give a damn one way or another. What they did to Oscar Isaac as Apocalypse basically rendered him a flat character with hardly any facial expression. He is meant to be the most threatening character in the X-Men universe and yet his power was greatly underrepresented. To put it in perspective, the X-Men: Evolution cartoon show spent almost an entire season building up to the arrival of Apocalypse and then only spent four episodes (23 minutes each) actually present. Apocalypse was the mutant that all other mutants aware of his existence feared. It also took nearly every metahuman Xavier had connections to plus SHIELD to take him down.
X-Men: Apocalypse was a hollow shell of the immense storytelling feat that was the Apocalypse story line. The majority of the time was spent establishing a bit of character development for our heroes and supporting foes, but even these weren’t done well. The foes were too easily swayed in what should have been a lot of inner turmoil and skepticism, but instead they joined Apocalypse because of what amounts to parlor tricks and a few new toys. It was all too little, too late for me to care about the characters or what they were going through.
Like many other reviewers across the interwebs, I felt the only character I actually gave a damn about was Quicksilver and his scenes were truly enjoyable.
In contrast, Captain America: Civil War felt like a carefully crafted story composing a masterpiece from the various Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) materials. They even incorporated elements from Agents of SHIELD and yet they managed to keep it relatively self-contained so that you could still follow along if you hadn’t seen every episode (or any). Although each of the Iron Man, Avengers, Thor, and Captain America films that led up to this one have had their strong points as well as flaws, Civil War pulls together the disparate elements of those films into a cohesive narrative.
Furthermore, it managed to tell a story similar to the comic book story it was based on without having to invent new characters and try to hurriedly bring them in. I won’t tell you the details of the comic book differences because it might inadvertently ruin some of the film, but I think fans who are familiar with the Civil War story from the comics will be happy with film even if it is different. It still deals with the central issues brought up in the comic and although the X-Men don’t show up (because Fox still owns the rights to the X-Men cinematic universe), there are plenty of favorites who throw down in this epic conflict.
One character I have some issue with is Vision. In the comics, Vision is more of a machine, much like Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation and he has a fairly dispassionate view of humanity. Vision in the cinematic universe is more just like an alien, more like Martian Manhunter from the DC comics. It may not bother other people as much as it did me, plus Paul Bettany is great in the role so it’s hard to complain. Amazingly, Bettany’s make-up and costuming for Vision is relatively on the same scale as Isaac’s Apocalypse yet they didn’t push Isaac for more from his performance. We already know Isaac is great from The Force Awakens and Ex Machina so I can only assume his performance was largely influenced by the writing and direction.
tl;dr – Go see Captain America: Civil War in theaters and wait for X-Men: Apocalypse to come out on Redbox DVD and Blu-ray or some pay-per-view service.
