Are we sure it's not just going to be a cameo by his boots again? 'Cause I'll bet they could save a bundle if they only have to design 1/6th of a costume. That budget's not getting any bigger!

I wouldn't say that's true. At least, not anymore. Kevin Feige even confirmed in an interview that they were no longer making an effort to re-explain characters and backstories after Phase One. Civil War features LOADS of characters who are never explained beyond a bunch of vague exchanges and insinuations— the movies…

Fair enough! To each his own. If you got more out of it than I did, then more power to ya'… Heck, my original impression of it was a LOT better when it first came out, myself. I think my low opinion of it stems more from the knowledge that it COULD have been a lot better, rather than how bad it actually IS.

This is as wonderfully surreal as that time RoboCop showed up on the WWF to free Sting from a steel cage.

I could kind of see that… but the shift is so radical, so dramatic, and so underdeveloped that it literally happens in a scene transition. Logan goes from hunting down the Brotherhood alone (following his own agenda, being a loner, etc.) to coming back to the mansion to regroup after a serious ass-kicking… and in the…

But that's just it: "getting by" and coasting on the goodwill of the first two movies means that it squanders a tremendous amount of storytelling potential. Jean Grey's return is not only badly mishandled, but it's relegated to a B-plot as the filmmakers push a cheap "mutant cure"/Magneto and the Brotherhood A-plot on…

Hindsight is 20/20. Given a choice between a kinda weird, baffling fourth Spider-Man by Sam Raimi, or the dull grey nothingness that was The Amazing Spider-Man… I'd much rather have gotten this Spider-Man 4.

I'm usually a fan of extended cuts, and prefer to watch them over the theatrical cuts in most cases. But a couple of nights ago, I saw the theatrical cut for the first time after getting the Rogue Cut, and it is definitely the superior version of the movie. Singer's got good instincts when it comes to editing…

But that's just it: unlike the MCU, you don't HAVE to watch every single film and divergent franchise to understand what's happening in each successive film. Even in the "trilogies"— 1, 2, and 3; First Class, Days of Future Past, and Apocalypse— you can pretty much come into any of the movies fresh and enjoy them…

As unbelievably bad as that film was, I will still watch it every once in a while, because goddamn it, Kelsey Grammer was a perfect Hank McCoy, and Last Stand is unfortunately the only movie I can see him in (outside of a cameo).

I love that the X-Men films are like a tonal medium between the colorful, fun-at-all-costs MCU films, and the grittier, Earth-bound Chris Nolan Batman films. There's an emotional reality to the best of them, but they're not afraid to go crazy and feature giant colorful set pieces and broader humor. They're fun, but…

Yeah, it's funny how Singer decided to pick and choose the things he wanted to keep from The Last Stand. Grammer's Beast is in DoFP, along with Ellen Page's Kitty Pryde, but both Xavier and later Scott are miraculously resurrected, and in Apocalypse he completely reimagines Angel and introduces him twenty years too…

Kinda makes you wish they'd just avoided turning "Stryker"'s eyes yellow at the end of DoFP in the first place, so that the obvious takeaway would be that Logan had ACTUALLY just been caught by Stryker, and that he was going to end up in the Weapon X project.

I liked that they used the character of Apocalypse to explore the roots of extremism and cult mentality, and exploring that point through Magneto made a lot of sense.

I saw the film, and honestly, I liked Issac as Apocalypse. They were obviously going for the idea of him being a cult leader— a charismatic sooth-sayer, whose presence comes largely from his voice and his subdued body language.

Not to mention Nicolas Hoult as Beast, a character for whom inability to blend in as human has been a defining element for decades… and who spends half the movie without make-up.

I say drawing a line in the sand at a certain point in a character's history is a bit of an extreme option. I prefer to draw brackets around runs or stories I find dull or unpalatable. I did it with Superior Spider-Man, I did it with Grant Morrison's run on Batman, did it with a LOOOOOT of the New 52, and I'll do it…

Exactly! It seems like it would solve a lot of his problems if there were just more of him running around…

I don't know… I was hearing some pretty silly guesses. Some people were saying it was Earth-Two Wally West, Ronnie Raymond, another Harrison Wells, Eobard Thawne, Eddie Thawne… I got into a debate with some guy not three episodes ago who insisted it was gonna be Earth-Three Barry Allen.

This is actually exactly why I was waiting for Apocalypse to show up in an X-Men movie. Because up until now, the X-films have been all about streamlining and simplifying the ridiculous characters and histories of the comics into something digestible and straightforward… and I am DYING to see how they pull that off…