So I Saw Apocalypse

[wickedbish]

There were some things I loved and some things I . . . didn't.

This is by no means a full review. I'm just going to write down some of my thoughts on Storm, Psylocke, Jubilee, and Jean.


STORM

• As we all know, Storm is my favorite comic book superhero of all time. I was beyond thrilled to learn that she would have a major role in this movie, with its rebooted timeline and whatnot, because in the original trilogy (and Days of Future Past) she is basically "token black chick with lightning."
• Good golly gosh, was I ever disappointed. I mean, I was not surprised, because I had very carefully prepared myself for this, but: She DOES NOT have a "major role" in this movie. You might think that being on Team Apocalypse would finally give her a chance to cut loose and really cause some destruction . . . but no, they have Magneto for that; after all this time, she is still the token black chick with the lightning.
• We don't learn a whole lot about her backstory, but what we do get to see sharply veers from canon in two ways, both of which are annoying:
• 1. She is a terrible thief. She is not sneaky at all. She gets caught. Because she conjures up some wind to cause a distraction so she can steal from a merchant while his back is turned. (Note: This is the one time in the whole movie where she uses her powers to do anything other than fly or throw around lightning.)
• 2. She has normal hair. Apocalypse turns it white. I don't even have words for how angry this makes me.

PSYLOCKE

• There are a lot of things you can do with Psylocke. Check any or all of the following boxes: Telepath. Telekinetic. Psychic knife. Psychic katana. Psychic bow & arrow. Shadow teleportation. White. Asian. Captain Britian's twin sister. Captain Britain. Blind. Dead. Crimson Dawn. THE LIST GOES ON. Her history is convoluted. Ninja is indisputably her most famous role, so I can see why they went with that here.
• But what genius decided to put her in her iconically contentious Ninja Swimsuit and add high heels?
• What exactly were her powers? Psychic weapons (which we know are usually the result of her telepathy and/or telekinesis, although she displays zero signs of those powers here): primarily katanas, but in the final battle she switches to whips. For a while I thought maybe she could teleport because Team Apocalypse does a lot of this with some sort of purple energy, but of course this power turns out to belong to Apocalypse. WHY DID THEY MAKE IT PURPLE?
• Her hair only has a few streaks of purple. I wish they had gone all out.
• I wish they had made her Asian, if only so one Asian person in the whole movie actually got to do anything.

JUBILEE

• WHAT the actual fucking FUCK is the point of making a movie and putting Jubilee in it and then NOT LETTING HER DO ANYTHING?!??!??????!? She hangs out with Jean, Scott, and Kurt, making you think she's going to be part of the group when they go off to join the adults for the final smackdown, but no, they just kind of randomly get separated as soon as things take a turn for the seriously bad. She uses her powers a total of zero times. She has a handful of lines. Four or five sentences, tops. She is something less than a cameo, but slightly more than a prop. I love love love love her, but what is the point of this? I would be somewhat less perturbed if they had never done this exact same thing more than once before, but THEY HAVE.
• And seriously, why? It's not like she's boring. She can blow shit up with a gesture. There are plenty of explosions in all of these movies. Why not use the character whose whole power is doing that?
• It's extra annoying because she is SO CUTE and I was so ready to watch her kick some ass. I should have known.

JEAN

• The best part of the movie.
• I did find myself wishing she would actually use her TK a little more, though. For example, in fights. All she ever did was a) hide and b) free Logan. It apparently never occurred to her that she could take out all those guards faster than he did by just, you know, thinking at them until they fell over. You can rationalize it by pointing out that this is a younger version of the character who is still nervous about her powers, but literally no one even suggests that she could at least try.
• Sansa Stark is easily my favorite version of Jean Grey in recent memory. She's a complicated character for me because her powers are great, but she is usually portrayed a love interest first and a cosmic deity second and one of the most powerful psychics on the planet third, which is obviously all wrong, so her personality tends to get real old real fast. But I loved her here. She does connect with Scott as soon as he arrives at the school, but they both have their own character arcs to go through, and their inevitable romance is only implied. As much as I wished she would be more confident in her powers, it was pretty great to watch her struggle with her potential for the whole movie and then turn out to be the only reason the good guys won.

ALSO

• Unless I'm seriously mistaken, Storm and Jubilee are never mentioned by name. Jubilee definitely wasn't, I'm not sure about Storm.
• Apocalypse doesn't just turn Storm's hair white, he is also the reason Charles loses his hair. LIKE, WHY?
• It's pretty cool to see Mystique as the new X-Men's combat instructor.