He took over North America and he only got that far because he decided to attack before the formation of the X-Men, Avengers, Fantastic Four, etc. Basically, any superhero that would have stomp his shit in wasn't around. And people like Thor didn't exist.
OLM being the inspiration for Logan doesn't really have much to do with my point. Which is that Apocalypse is overall not a mega threat to the X-Men and so they didn't really waste him. Besides Logan was barely anything like OML.
edited 27th Apr '17 5:59:00 AM by ManOfSin
You can apply all the possible justifications about Apocalypse possibly sucker-punching the universe somehow, but the undeniable fact it is a story of Apocalypse's sheer dread. He runs his empire with an iron fist, and the fight of the X-Men is at its most hopeless here.
Every adaptation seems to pick up on this fact. the 90's X-Men show and X-Men Evolution both portray him as a neverending threat.
Comic book writers do have a tendency to screw him over, but the fact remains he is quite the villain as many storyarcs have shown (Endgame, Fall of the Mutants, Ao A).
I brought up Old Man Logan because you brought up how Ao A is not a "canon" story.
edited 26th Apr '17 6:23:48 PM by Gaon
"All you Fascists bound to lose."
Everything I said was explicitly stated in that event. It's like the writers were pretty much admitting they were nerfing the universe.
The event was less about Apocalypse as a threat and more about showing a dystopian Marvel Universe. He was merely a MacGuffin for that as reflected by his little panel time. There is a lot of tell and no show when it came to Apocalypse's sheer dread.
Speaking of the animated versions. The 90s version felt like they were stealing moments and traits from other villians. Most notablely they took Stryfe being Cable's archnemsis and the one behind the Legacy Virus and gave it to Apocalypse. Him killing the X-Men was also a moment they took from Hope Summers.
I don't remember him doing anything impressive in Endgame. He gives an infant child a virus and takes some of his power to boost up his strength.
Fall of The Mutants is really the only good use of the character and that was the inspiration for the plot of the film.
edited 26th Apr '17 8:00:00 PM by ManOfSin
The point I'm making isn't really about physical prowess as much as it is about menace and impact (so small but impacting acts of cruelty like Endgame counts). His physical threat is secondary. You have a strange perspective of Age of Apocalypse where the fact Apocalypse rules over a ruthless dystopia the X-Men are hopelessly outgunned against in a story where Apocalypse's social darwinist ethos is a looming menace in every single issue means nothing to the character and operates entirely independently from him, but each to his own I suppose.
The cartoons do borrow some traits from Stryfe, but mostly what they do is take the characters to its logical conclusion. The reason he keeps getting shanked physically is because writers want to worf him for someone else and forget his menace factor, on paper he's supposed to be this millennia old creature of unfathomable power, and the cartoons actually pay attention to this. Something the movie also should have.
For that matter, there are other good Apocalypse story (Endgame's sequel is pretty good, as is that one story Apocalypse is dying).
edited 26th Apr '17 8:17:43 PM by Gaon
"All you Fascists bound to lose."
In the movie he is a millennia old creature of unfathomable power. Dude shook the planet, decapitated people with sand, wipe out cities, react to a guy who moves at lightspeed, etc. He only lost to someone who was shown earlier to have had the power to wipe out the planet.
And I would let to add that Apocalypse being this all-powerful mutant was added in with the Cyclops and Phoenix mini-series. He wasn't very powerful on his own during his earlier days. The original idea was that he was this false messiah who promised people salvation and whatever they wanted. The movie would have been better if it had gone that route more.
edited 26th Apr '17 9:26:00 PM by ManOfSin
I remember Apocalypse admitting that Magneto in his prime was stronger than him in Age of Apocalypse. And mentioned that Magneto almost killed him years ago, but Mags lost half his strength in the process. So Apocalypse getting one shot by Mags wasn't him getting screwed over since the story established that he only got as far as he did because Magneto was nuffed.
Even in that in the animated series Magneto beat Apocalypse in a one-on-one match. Evolution was the only time Apocalypse was ever above Magneto.
edited 30th May '17 12:52:26 AM by DevilMayhem666
Hope Summers didn't exist in the 90s.
She kinda did. Bishop revealed that Hope is the traitor that kills the X-Men and creates the shitty future he is from. A storyline that was created back in the 90s and fleshed out in the 2000s.
That reveal didn't come until the 2000s so Apocalypse couldn't have stolen anything from her.
It definitely couldn't have been Apocalypse though. Since it was established that it was one of their own.
If I recall correctly, the idea that it was one of the X-Men who killed them was more of a suspicion rather than actually confirmed within the story (the 90s show made it so that it was Mystique who framed Gambit). It was one of those plot threads that went nowhere until later. Even the Hope story seemed to imply Bishop was wrong.
So any news on that Gambit movie?
Kinberg and Donner still want to make the movie. But honestly, they should just have him and Rogue be in that X-23 movie.
it's a living
The *Shi'ar* are happening? For real? Huh. Guess I'll have to eat my hat.
Wonder if this means Agents of SWORD isn't going to be a thing after all, or at least not the way I thought it was.
edited 14th Jun '17 11:21:16 AM by Unsung
It shouldn't be surprising since they alluded to alien existence in Apocalypse.
Have to wait and see. Matthew Vaughn was writer and producer before his first directorial debut with Stardust. But there is also the stuff that happened with The Mummy recently.
edited 14th Jun '17 5:10:10 PM by ManOfSin
Rock on, Gold Dust Woman
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Let's not doomsay just yet, please.
This is the first time Kinberg will be directing a film (he's normally producer and writer), so I'm a bit nervous that it feels like the executives are taking this film into their own hands after Apocalypse didn't turn out as well as the previous films (critically speaking, no idea about commercially). I'm hoping he might do a good job, but I'm still a bit nervous about it. Fox has a potential goldmine with Deadpool and Logan being some of the highest grossing and highest rated R rated superhero films, and could potentially make more films that are all R rated and could make considerable competition with the MCU and DCEU. This film feels like it might be a rehash of The Last Stand (minus the fight for two different plotlines, since it seems to be a straight story with Jean and the Shi'ar), but for the love of god I hope they don't fuck it up.
If they wanna make it good, I'd recommend:
Don't have a gratuitous Wolverine cameo (which already seems unlikely after Logan).
Don't bring Mystique back again. She's overused and doesn't really have much of a purpose anymore. Tone Magneto down in usage too, how about it.
Get Sophie Turner to actually act and emote or, failing that, cast somebody else as Jean who actually can act.
Maybe at least develop Storm better, she was wasted in the last film. Or at least develop Jubilee or something.
Actually show and don't tell. Apocalypse was really bad about telling us and not showing us in certain moments.
Oh, and whoever the villain is, please let them be a little bit better than Apocalypse himself was.
Have you any dreams you'd like to sell?
Based on what we know it seems less like Dark Phoenix and more like Bendis' Trial of Jean Grey.
Yes, yes, the X-Men movies are starting to get bad. I knew it, ever since I saw Days Of Future Past. All according to Feige's keikaku.
But seriously, I think the only reason people don't give the X-Men movies more shit than they should is because these movies have managed to be just above mediocre, compared to true bombs like the DCEU movies and the Fant4stic movie. I mean, Days Of Future Past is mostly remembered because of the Quicksilver scene, yet the rest of the movie is plainly forgettable. The last movie has the similar Quicksilver scene and the Wolverine cameo, but any more than that it's... pretty bad.
Fox's saving grace is Deadpool, of course, but they can just as easily get cocky and fuck that franchise up too.
I actually thought Apocalypse had a good first half full of great spectacle, humor, and cool ideas. But it had a mediocre at best second half, that despite still having a few moments of greatness it had a disjointed Weapon X, full of horrible green screen, a poorly directed rushed Horsemen fight, and Jlaw's performance just gets worse as the film goes on.
edited 14th Jun '17 6:59:57 PM by ManOfSin
it's a living
They're remembered because in the time they came out, they were inventive, colourful (again, *for the time*), and sci-fi in a way that not a lot of movies were for that decade. You took what you could get, in between Bourne Identity clones, in the age of gritty realism and shaky-cam. There are scenes like the Nightcrawler fight that still hold up pretty well, and there was a time, believe it or not, when a drab, realistic take on the X-Men was something novel. Basically, times have changed, but at that time...we didn't always have a lot to look forward to. There wasn't a guarantee of 5-10 superhero and sci-fi adaptations every summer and winter. Nostalgia counts for a lot, in this case.
The series has always owed a lot to Hugh Jackman's take on Wolverine, and how much you like the Fox XCU pretty much rides entirely on how much you engage with his stoic manly man character and the various women and children who follow in his wake.
And Sir Patrick Stewart, of course.
I liked the first two thirds of Logan and The Wolverine, almost all of Deadpool, and the Westchester parts of Apocalypse. I remember enjoying DOFP at the time but haven't seen it since. I thought First Class was well-made but overrated. And I would've liked more of the original Nightcrawler. I've always liked the character (the original version of the character, not so much the teenage version that's been kicking around since Ultimate X-Men/Evolution), and that one fight at the White House really sold me on the idea that I loved X2 for a long time.
Edited by Unsung on Oct 2nd 2018 at 4:21:12 AM
That's the one yes. The one that starts with him wiping out most of the planet's population, turning it into a barren dystopia and installing a ruthless dictatorship that turns the X-Men into runaways. The fact Magneto one-shots him at the end doesn't diminish from the fact Apocalypse actually makes honor on his name on that story, his offhand end aside.
It's status as a what if is utterly irrelevant, as well. So was Old Man Logan when Fox decided to build Logan around it.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."