Three Actors Join "X-Men: Apocalypse" as Cyclops, Jean Grey and Storm

[Guy1]

So let's see here. Prior to holding hands:
-Quill distracted Ronan so that Rocket could fix the BFG and Drax could fire it (not unlike Cyclops and Jean shooting Sabretooth)
-Gamora fought Nebula so that she could get the other Guardians onto the bridge
-Quill and the other Guardians together held off a small army. Drax killed Korath (it was shown earlier that Quill's gun only stunned him).
-Rocket was giving orders to TWO fleets to defend the city
-Rocket led a squadron so that Quill and the Guardians could go in the ship
-The entire plan that they *had* to be separated and achieve certain objectives was explained before the entire battle.

That is a hell of a lot more teamwork than the X-Men ever showed in the climax of the first movie. If one of them failed, they ALL would have failed. Whereas if, prior to Magneto, you took out Jean, Storm still could have lifted Logan. Or hell, eliminate Jean and Storm from the Magneto showdown, and Cyclops would have saved the day. It was a priority for the writers to somehow get Logan up there for the big climax. On the contrary, Quill actually played just a big a role as Drax or Rocket in that fight before he grabbed the gem (indeed, Quill, Drax, and Rocket together ended up turning the tide).

Again, Sabretooth's defeat was a trap, not a battle (enough for exposition). And they didn't even need teamwork for Magneto, but it was shoehorned in artificially so that they could work together (again, Cyclops said he could just blast him, and they told him no and came up with a complicated plan. And when Logan got in trouble, what did Cyclops do? He blasted him! Hell, Magneto's back was turned!). The Guardians, on the other hand, had specific roles in the final battle. Even whenever the Guardians split up, there was always someone with Starlord, the center of the movie, to spread some of the focus around -- indeed, he had at least two major battle scenes with each Guardian, and sometimes multiple Guardians as well. Because it's a team movie, not "Starlord and the Guardians of the Galaxy." Wolverine would have left the rest of the X-Men for his fight scenes.

This is one reason why I appreciate First Class. Even though Magneto lead the charge, the other X-Men backed him up, and so they were guaranteed some time in the spotlight. But it has to say something when the original X-Men show more teamwork than the modern team.

Just like the Avengers and the Battle of New York (Thor bottlenecking, Stark containing, Hawkeye on watch, Cap and Widow engaging, and Hulk smashing), each Guardian had a role in that battle with a clear objective, this time with an entire musical montage to explain it. None of them disappeared, none of them were rendered useless. Cyclops and Jean served to get kicked by Toad, and Wolverine singlehandedly fought two of the Brotherhood by himself, reducing their story threat level in the process. If it were Singer's X-Men in Guardians of the Galaxy, it would have been LoganLoganLoganLogan doing all the work with Scott, Jean, and Ororo either vanishing from the action, rendered incapable of helping, or too occupied with Korath to lend a hand, from start-to-finish. Logan flying a ship , Logan ripping open the enemy ship, Logan flying ship in, Logan somehow defending the city, Logan somehow saving everyone from the crashed ship, Logan fighting Korath and then Ronan, Logan distracting Ronan, Logan repairing the BFG, and then Logan pulling an X3 and seizing the Infinity Stone by himself without need of the others. Maybe Storm flies in to save a child, but then back to Logan.

To compare and contrast final battles: The Guardians split up because that was the necessity of the plan. Each one had something to bring to the table, which they needed to fight a battle on several fronts. The X-Men split up because they were kicked by Toad. TOAD. The movie even invented his spitting power (he never had it in the comics before the movie!) so that they could incapacitate the woman who would become the Phoenix to try and make Toad somehow credible enough to engage three powerful X-Men and separate them from Logan.

Watch a basketball game. See how the players support and cover each other, how they provide openings for each other, how they read each other. Even Jordan needed the rest of the Bulls. That's teamwork -- knowing your role and how to best use it. Basketball teams can have a star player, but if that star player only dominates and doesn't rely on the others, the team loses. For much of the X-movies, that was Wolverine, who had to carry his so-called team. Over the course of three movies, how many times has he fought side-by-side with Scott? Jean? Bobby? Peter? He never even fought on screen *with* Jean, but rather against her (and no, lifting does not count. Even if it did, that's ONCE). Starlord had one movie and he's already beaten Logan in that regard. If Singer wanted to be honest, he should have just titled the movies "Wolverine" -- indeed, I thought the second Wolverine movie, which had far fewer guest stars than Origins, was a good film, but it embraced his solitary nature.

Some of the best teamwork I've seen in a movie, granted not a superhero one, was in The Legend Ends with the main guys going four on one with Shishio. The teamwork there was awesome. Also, in the Raid Redemption in the last fight.
The Kamen Rider The First/Next Movies had some sweet superhero teamwork too.

[Cyke]

Right because ScarJo, Robert Downey and Chris Evans careers have been ruined by Comic Book Movies.

To add on, as much as we like to rag on Halle Berry, she won an Oscar after doing X-Men, so that movie clearly wasn't detrimental to her career. And then there's Michael Fassbender, who, while he was doing critically acclaimed work before and during First Class, he was also continuing to do so after the movie, too.

Some of the best teamwork I've seen in a movie, granted not a superhero one, was in The Legend Ends with the main guys going four on one with Shishio. The teamwork there was awesome. Also, in the Raid Redemption in the last fight.
The Kamen Rider The First/Next Movies had some sweet superhero teamwork too.

I've actually been pretty blown away by some of the teamwork done in Toku fiction as a whole. Sure, some of it is overly orchestrated like traditional Sentai (and how it seems like they all went to rehearsal first), but I think more and more we're seeing Toku heroes -- when they team up -- pulling off some pretty smart tactics; someone who's armed with AoE attacks, for example, is better fit to go after the foot soldiers than someone who can go one-on-one with a boss. Even some of the "loner" Riders end up doing fairly well in a team-up.

[Guy1]

To compare and contrast final battles: The Guardians split up because that was the necessity of the plan. Each one had something to bring to the table, which they needed to fight a battle on several fronts. The X-Men split up because they were kicked by Toad. TOAD. The movie even invented his spitting power (he never had it in the comics before the movie!) so that they could incapacitate the woman who would become the Phoenix to try and make Toad somehow credible enough to engage three powerful X-Men and separate them from Logan.

[Guy1]

I've actually been pretty blown away by some of the teamwork done in Toku fiction as a whole. Sure, some of it is overly orchestrated like traditional Sentai (and how it seems like they all went to rehearsal first), but I think more and more we're seeing Toku heroes -- when they team up -- pulling off some pretty smart tactics; someone who's armed with AoE attacks, for example, is better fit to go after the foot soldiers than someone who can go one-on-one with a boss. Even some of the "loner" Riders end up doing fairly well in a team-up.

[Cyke]

Hah, one of my favorite fights of all time, though that teamwork is just as much as it is just a purely satisfying beatdown. Still, that they keep switching lineups and alternating attacks and attacking en masse (the 4 ninja-themed Rangers together, for example) is pretty neat. I also quite like that they'd signal to each other -- Gai telling Marvelous and Joe there's an opening, or Ahim and Luka holding him down so that the guys could speedblitz.

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To another example, this isn't the best, but one of my favorites: The World's End. These middle aged, drunk men past their prime, constantly pulling off fight moves they have no business doing in the first place, teaming up and trading opponents and taking turns and watching each other's backs. Yeah, that's all part of the humor, but I think in a way it says something about their decades-long friendship, too -- very fluid considering they're all non-athletes, and just really enjoyable to watch. That Simon Pegg hired one of Jackie Chan's stunt team to be the movie's fight choreographer and trainer was a brilliant move.