Cometh the Apocalypse

At long last it has finally come, the one teaser it feels like I've been waiting weeks for and that is the first teaser trailer for next year's X-Men Apocalypse.

And I have to say it looks really really good, surpassing even my own fairly high hopes for this film for three reasons:

- First off I love the feeling of Apocalypse himself, now that the Viz FX work required for this character to really come to life in a way he never really could from the Comic Con coverage the film got earlier this year is starting to come together, he looks to be a very imposing and memorable villain much like he was in the 1990s Animated Series.

It also helps to have one of the best actors working today in Oscar Isaac playing the role, time and time again I have seen this man give a great performance and another strength of this teaser is that they are wisely hiding him as much as possible in terms of not showing you too much (this movie is still 5 and a half months away and there will be plenty of Viz FX and Post Production work still to be completed in that time I'm sure.)

- The second is that the film really feels like it has the feeling of the early 1980s (the film takes place specifically in 1983) and the horror tone that permeates throughout a lot of this teaser absolutely fits in with the wave of Horror films that came out at that time as does the brief glimpse of the disaster film esque shots as that wave of the genre was coming to its end around that time as well.

The Apocalypse storyline is also a nice fit for this decade because we were genuinely frightened of a real life Age of Apocalypse started by a Nuclear War between the United States and the Soviet Union (in fact in April of 1983 the French were doing Nuclear Testing in the South Pacific) plus this was also the year Nicholas Meyer's film the Day After was released which described a Nuclear Incident so there is a way to do the Apocalypse character I feel in a way that fits with the 1980s.

But I also have to talk about the hair and the costume work for this movie quite frankly it looks beautiful whether it be Charles's big bushy hair or the mullet style that Alex Summers/Havok has or indeed the Cyndi Lauper esque hair Jennifer Lawrence has in the film not to mention the Richard Gere esque look Nicholas Hoult sports as Dr. Hank McCoy/Beast.

But it's not just them there's also the wonderful denim costumes some of the characters wear (some of the set photos that leaked earlier this year also had Nightcrawler wearing a Thriller-esque jacket which looked really cool) or Jubilee really rocking the bright colors she wears, I could go on further but I am just in love with the hair and costuming I've seen for this film so far.

- And lastly it seems like Singer finally has the confidence to do the big action scenes I feel he's wanted to do and showed some early signs of doing in Days of Future Past but maybe felt he either didn't have the advancements in Visual Effects to do it (he stated on the Rogue Cut disc for DOFP that he did not have this level of Visual Effects available to him when he made X-Men 1 and 2) or the Story and Character reasons (Bryan has been very good I feel at balancing the action with the story and character motivations) or indeed the backing of the Studio which he has not always had.

Now it seems it like all 3 have come together for him in his favor and if the disaster film esque shot of New York we see in the teaser as well as the post credits scene in Days of Future Past is any indication this will definitely feel like a film to see on the big screen and even in 3D (Singer is shooting the film in 3D instead of doing a post production conversion as can happen often with 3D film releases) and I cannot wait to see this on a proper big screen and sound next May.

But lastly I feel like with this and Captain America Civil War that these look like great movies with good stories, something at the core to think about as well as ignite my imagination, good action scenes and heroes and villains, I really hope both of these films deliver on this promise unlike what I feel with Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice which was ruined for me with its latest preview as it made it look like it all culminates in a fight with a big CGI Monster which has very very rarely worked but as in all things movie wise we wait and we see.

And that was my column on the X-Men Apocalypse teaser trailer.