X-Men: The Animated Series’ take on villain Apocalypse is way cooler than the movie version. The success of 1998’s Blade would inspire studios to test out more comic book adaptations at the box-office, beginning with X-Men. A live-action X-Men movie had spent years in development hell, with directors from Kathryn Bigelow to Paul WS Anderson being attached. The film was given a modest budget for a blockbuster, but its surprise success laid the groundwork for a franchise that would run for 20 years.

X-Men 2 would prove to be another major success, but the quality of the series would dip up and down throughout its run. X-Men Origins: Wolverine and X-Men: Dark Pheonix are considered among the weakest entries, while X-Men: First Class and Logan were praised. The Deadpool movies are also tied to the franchise and despite being R-rated, they proved to be the most successful at the box-office. The X-Men are set to be rebooted within the MCU, with the long, long-delayed spinoff The New Mutants being the final entry taking place in the original Fox franchise.

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Following the success and acclaim that greeted X-Men: Days Of Future Past, hopes were high for the 2016 follow-up X-Men: Apocalypse. This 1980s set prequel featured the team doing battle against Oscar Isaac’s titular villain, the world’s first and most powerful mutant who has awakened and intends to destroy humans and mutants alike. The film itself was let down by a messy script that featured too many characters and subplots and overdosed on noisy action setpieces.

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While Oscar Isaac is a fantastic actor, he could only do so much with Apocalypse as the film portrayed him. Despite being all-powerful the character never felt all that imposing, and while Isaac was buried under layers of make-up for the role, it had the unfortunate effect of making him resemble Ivan Ooze from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie. It also stands in stark contrast to X-Men: The Animated Series’ take on the character. The Apocalypse from the cartoon series was a larger than life – sometimes literally when he grew to giant-sized – villain with a grandiose ego.

X-Men: The Animated Series’ Apocalypse was voiced by the late John Colicos, who got to bark such memorable quotes as “I am the rocks of the eternal shore. Crash against me and be broken!” and “You presume to attempt to destroy me!” The character’s portrayal was undeniably hammy, but he made for a great foil for the X-Men, coming across as a legitimate threat and being one of the show’s best villains. Sadly, the same can’t be said for X-Men: Apocalypse’s version of the classic villain.

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Padraig Cotter
(3485 Articles Published)

It’s pronounced Paw-rick, not Pad-raig. Now that’s out of the way, a brief introduction. Padraig has been writing about film online since 2012, when a friend asked if he’d like to contribute the occasional review or feature to their site.

A part-time hobby soon blossomed into a career when he discovered he really loved writing about movies, TV and video games – he even (arguably) had a little bit of talent for it. He has written words for Den of Geek, Collider, The Irish Times and Screen Rant over the years, and can discuss anything from the MCU – where Hawkeye is clearly the best character – to the most obscure cult b-movie gem, and his hot takes often require heat resistant gloves to handle.

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He’s super modern too, so his favorite movies include Jaws, Die Hard, The Thing, Ghostbusters and Batman. He can be found as i_Padds on Twitter making bad puns.

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