X-Men: Apocalypse (Bryan Singer)

[Henry Gale]

But none of it is. None of it. The X-Men series or the MCU. It's all just nonsense. But at least the MCU has a game plan that may pay off eventually. The X-Men series is a mess.

I think this is the issue. As much as things have undeniably changed with the increased serialization of big-budget filmmaking, I still think it's best to go with committing to each movie (as an audience, anyway) as its own fully-formed, self-supported thing to assess instead of sitting in a hammock between a bigger beginning and end.

If you're looking for Marvel Studios' to all to lead somewhere but haven't already felt fulfilled by each movie on their own terms and aren't moved by anything they offer in the moment, then I can't imagine any destination (which I don't see either of them or X-Men having in any clear terms in even the foreseeable decade other than with stars and certain key players behind the scenes moving on from the properties) magically elevating everything that's come before.

All I know is that I can't deny Days of Future Past and Guardians of the Galaxy are among the few recent blockbusters that moved me to tears (in the same summer, even!) so I can safely say I don't need what comes next to them to justify those emotions in any way.

Well, you should have told me that before I went and watched it. I just wasted 2.5 hours deluding myself I was being emotionally compelled.

Haha, exactly. Like shit, now I gotta tell the pre-teen me he was an idiot for liking Singer's first two movies because their continuity would be betrayed in over a decade.