8 Ways To Fix The X-Men Franchise After Apocalypse

1) Get Weird Again

For the most part, X-Men: Apocalypse regrettably comes across like a generic action movie. Unlike the best of the series, Apocalypse feels often like it could have been made by any old hack, lacking as it does both the originality and the personal feel of Bryan Singer’s early X-movies and Matthew Vaughn’s kooky, ballsy First Class. In short, Apocalypse suffers for being one of the less out-there films in the X-Men franchise.

Apocalypse does come alive fitfully, in bizarre moments that could only belong in this series: the Ancient Egyptian Four Horsemen annihilating their enemies in various inventive ways; Apocalypse dropping people through the floor, leaving them there to wriggle as life ebbs away. The X-Men movies are always at their best when they’re being totally weird and unexpected. To paraphrase Richard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some, the next X-movie should embrace its inner fucking strange, man.