I loved
X-Men: Apocalypse and I still don't know why it 48% of critics liked it and why it has an average rating of 5.7/10. That being said, the lowest mark I would give this movie is an average rating of 6.5/10 with an expected Tomatometer of 60%. Why? It's not a bad movie, it is certainly better than most comic book films we've gotten in the last few years. But it is what it is, and let me analyze why.
The Marketing:
Does anyone remember how immersive and interactive the marketing for
Deadpool was? Well, since that just happened, I won't go in depth so, who remembers the
Days of Future Past marketing? It was viral and intense, we had the Trask Industries website, the Bent Bullet website, the 25 moments website. All of these different tools which got us enveloped in the world of the future, how the Sentinels came to be and did Magneto kill the president and did Emma Frost inject Jack Ruby with cancer. I remember people theorizing about all that online. What did the
Apocalypse marketing give us, a few tweets that contained pictures of a timeline and some 80s styled videos. No conspiracy theory websites about the mysterious Clan Akkaba, no Illuminati propaganda websites about how Apocalypse will bring the New World Order... just some tweets, like two videos oh, and there was fake sale of the X-Mansion. Had
Apocalypse repeated the marketing of
Days of Future Past or
Deadpool, I bet you the box office would have drastically increased on the domestic front. Instead of struggling to reach that of the original X-Men, it would have probably reached at least $200 million.
The Trailers:
A bit related to marketing, but hear me out? Who remembers the first trailer of X-Men: Days of Future Past. It was emotional and felt like a homecoming. Everything about that trailer was golden, down to the instrumental. You know what? Just watch it right here:
That's a phenomenal first trailer. What an impression! I remember the internet being abuzz about this trailer. I remember Devin Faraci bashing this and getting bashed for praising Josh Trank's (at that point in time) upcoming
Fant4stic and not liking this purely because it wasn't Kevin Feige. This trailer had more activity than the all of
X-Men: Apocalypse. Well, what about the first trailer of
Apocalypse? I liked it, but it wasn't this. It was second-trailer quality and when it gets down to it, the best part about it had to be Oscar Isaac's lines: "You are all my children". Less emphasis was placed on what made us excited for the last entry and things just felt off. Hell, none of the trailers for
Apocalypse are bad, but Oscar Isaac is the only memorable thing about them. That's not good. I remember the emotion in the faces of the actors for the first
Days of Future Past trailer, the Thin Red Line music, Logan's scream and old Charles meeting young Charles at the end and delivering a phenomenal line that got cut from the film.
The Kinberg:
Man I thought
X-Men: Apocalypse would be soo much better than
Days of Future Past. Why? Well, for starters, Bryan Singer's X-Men films only progressively got better. His third film better than the first two. Unheard of really. His film ended up being better than
Captain America: The Winter Soldier (it was, this is a fact). And he did that using Matthew Vaughn's crew, not even his own.
So for
X-Men: Apocalypse Singer is putting John Ottman back on editing duties in addition to composing it and Newton Thomas Sigel is th director of photography again. Oh, and add to that it looked like Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris were writing the screenplay. This was the
X2 crew! If Singer did that well with Vaughn's production team, imagine how well he could do on his own?
Then it turns out that Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris only aided Singer in developing the story. The screenplay was developed by Simon Kinberg. Don't get me wrong, there was nothing inherently wrong with the screenplay... but that's it. There was nothing that made it stand out like it did for
Days of Future Past. Hell, in hindsight, Jane Goldman is the reason Kinberg was able to write a good screenplay for that. Kinberg's screenplay isn't good, it isn't bad, it's just... well, tired but I guess not true. If Dougherty and Harris weren't going to write the screenplay, Kinberg shouldn't have been the one to adapt their story. On paper, the X-Men: Apocalypse story is wonderfully done but under Kinberg's pen, it isn't executed well enough to be paired up with the names of Dougherty and Harris.
Summary:
So in conclusion? Why did the box office end up being at least $100 million less than it should have been despite the reception the film had? They didn't market the film as well as they did their last two releases and released a pale trailer. Why was critical reception lukewarm, in spite of Fox expecting otherwise? Kinberg.