"X-Men: Apocalypse": The power and IQ of BOSS

August 2022-04-21 09:01:16

Many people say that this BOSS - Apocalypse - is not very good at fighting. It is clearly known as the strongest mutant in history, but it was given a second by Ching Grey.

After seeing this statement, the bosses in the movies I watched recently flashed in my mind, the green pig in "Angry Birds", the painless man in "Deadpool", the "Ip Man 3" in "Ip Man 3" Handsome coachman, horse face in "Star Wars 7: The Force Awakens", Ultron in "Avengers 2", Bond's righteous brother in "007: Spectre", Black John in "Terminator: Genesis" , The mountain eagle in "Take Tiger Mountain by Wisdom"... These recent bosses, one is weaker than the other, and the combat power seems to be generally not good. Compared with them, Apocalypse is obviously okay.

I really want to ask the bunch of bosses before the apocalypse: what happened to you?

In the past, the bosses were not like this.

When I was a kid, I played a popular arcade game called "Famous General" (we call it "Ban Dao Nian")--everyone I've played shows my age--a handicapped party like me, who played the first level in it. The small boss is still successful. If you let me fight the last big boss, it will be necessary to continue the currency until the whole family goes bankrupt.

But only this level of lethality is enough to be a BOSS. And the action movies at that time were also very similar to this kind of side-scrolling game: a good person can only be powerful when he beats a small gangster. When encountering the last big BOSS, it is inevitable that they have to rush to the street and then rely on the refill to turn around. of.

The absolute combat power of the BOSS: the blood rush index and the siege index

If we use an objective indicator to measure the combat power of BOSS in arcade games, it is undoubtedly "the number of renewal coins required to win it". For those arcade games I played as a child, the number of BOSS renewal coins was very high. So what about the BOSS combat power in the movie? Is there any metric to measure it?

I am a fan of Tsui Hark. In the three masterpieces "A Chinese Ghost Story", "Eastern Invincible" and "New Dragon Inn" that shaped part of my world view and aesthetics in the three masterpieces of Tsui Hark around the 80s and 90s, the bosses are very sharp. Let's take a look at how powerful the BOSS in these three works is.

The first is the old demon of Montenegro in "A Chinese Ghost Story".

The minions under him can hit the strongest Yan Chixia on the side of the good guy and vomit blood:

Then he shot himself, causing both Yan Chixia and Ning Caichen to suffer penetrating injuries:

After the resurrection of the third episode, it also made the old monk streamer all the golden blood:

Since the boss is so hard to beat, it is inevitable for good people to bleed and break bones. Therefore, the first indicator to measure the BOSS's combat power is ready to come out, that is - the blood-blood index: the combat power of the BOSS is proportional to the blood-blood of a good person.

Let's look at the undefeated fighting power of the East. First, he was peeped by the renegade Japanese samurai, and as a result, the Japanese samurai was beaten to a pool of blood:

Then he was surrounded and beaten by the dragons sent by Huashan:

As a result, the Huashan faction was broken all over the floor:

In the end, he was beaten by all the top masters on the good side:

As a result, the penetration of the good person's side, the vomiting of blood, and the disfigurement of disfigurement:

Dongfang's undefeated blood index is simply against the sky.

And the second indicator to measure the BOSS's combat power is about to come out, that is - the siege index: the combat power of the BOSS is proportional to the number of good people who fight with him.

Undoubtedly, the siege index of the undefeated East is also against the sky.

To be a competent BOSS, generally speaking, the blood rush index and the siege index should not be low.

Eunuch Cao in "New Dragon Inn", bloodletting:

Finally beaten to death:

In addition to Cao Yuan in the contemporary "Nervous Knife and Flying Cat", he also bleeds first:

And then beaten to death:

Eunuch Cao in the contemporary "New Meteor Butterfly Sword" (why are all the bosses surnamed Cao at that time? And they all look like Eunuchs?), let's bleed first:

And then beaten to death:

You see, not only Tsui Hark's three classics, but in many Hong Kong martial arts films at that time, the BOSS was a big killer.

But later, things changed. In Tsui Hark's own "Once Upon a Time", the male protagonist has changed from a former "master" to a "hero" - the difference between the two is huge.

It's a hero, don't even think about beating the boss, and it's not easy even for the boss to put some color on Huang Feihong. However, even so, the BOSS's blood rush index is still strong. Because although Huang Feihong can't be hurt, Huang Feihong's apprentices can. So before Huang Feihong takes care of the BOSS, Huang's unlucky apprentices will inevitably have to rush some blood to increase the BOSS's blood rush index:

Later, the blood rush index also hit the street. In my movie-watching impression, this still started with Tsui Hark. In his "Seven Swords", there are at least seven masters on the protagonist's side, and the film is realistic enough (realism means that there can be a lot of blood), and the premise of beating and blood is all there. Relying on Chu Zhaonan in the seven swords, he was able to get it done without even being injured.

And in the recent bunch of BOSS mentioned earlier, the handsome coachman in "Ip Man 3", the horse face in "Star Wars 7: The Force Awakens", the Bond's righteous brother in "007: Spectre", " The mountain sculptures in "Take Tiger Mountain" are all double-indexed at the same time, and the protagonists are almost all single-handedly, without major injuries, eating hot pot, humming a little song, and then cleaning up the BOSS. In the game, this is one life clearance, which is very boring.

The rest who earn a little bit of anger are the aliens in "Reunion 1" (I really can't remember what aliens they are, their faces are too vague) and the Ultron in "Reunion 2". It made the protagonists suffer a little bit, so the blood rush index is okay (just because the movie rating didn't really bleed much). It's a pity that these bosses are all plural. There are a lot of aliens in "Reunion 1". Although there is only one person in "Reunion 2", Ultron has countless clones. A bunch of heroes vs a bunch of BOSS, but the heroes are often beaten up. The feeling of fighting this kind of boss is - "Huh? Why is there still?" Instead of "Huh? Why can't you kill me?" Obviously, the latter is more fun.

The relative power of bosses: sequel, sequel

Why have so many bosses recently had some problems with their combat effectiveness? There is a part of the reason for the film, I think it's all in the "sequel".

One situation is to "hold a hand" for a later sequel.

Why is Fenghuo Liancheng in "Seven Swords" so weak? I think the biggest reason is that Tsui Hark was planning to make a sequel. In this first episode, a force much stronger than Fenghuo Liancheng has emerged. At the end of the film, the Seven Swords are indeed moving towards that force. In other words, the more powerful BOSS was arranged in the sequel to "Seven Swords" in the original setting. It's a pity that we haven't seen where this stronger BOSS is because of the box office word of mouth in the first episode.

In "Reunion 1 and 2", the BOSS's individual combat capability is weak, and this may also be considered. After all, there is still a total leader who can destroy the sky and the earth, Thanos is about to appear. With this ultimate boss, the previous boss can't be too strong. The horse face in "Star Wars 7: The Force Awakens" is so sloppy, it seems that it is also to make him upgrade to a more powerful BOSS in the follow-up "Star Wars 8".

The audience always expects the heroes to face more and more challenges, so the boss in the sequel must be stronger and stronger. Therefore, in the previous examples, in order to make room for the new bosses who will appear in the future, the director had to sacrifice the combat power of the first BOSS.

The second situation is that the previous BOSS forgot to keep a hand, and as a result, the subsequent sequel was forced to death by the previous one.

For example, after the second part of the "Terminator" series, the word of mouth all hit the street. I think one reason is that the liquid metal robot T1000 in the second part is too powerful, and it is almost the strongest possibility for robot BOSS. The directors tried to surpass T1000 when setting the BOSS of each subsequent film, but whether it is the female Terminator TX that can be deformed at will, or the black John that can be magnetized, they are all variants of T1000 and have never really surpassed. . Fighting almost the same boss three times in a row, even if the strength of the latter is not worse than that of the former, but the audience's perception is that one crab is not as good as one crab.

That is to say, the blood rush index and the siege index only reflect the absolute combat power of the boss, but the audience will also measure the relative combat power of the boss compared to its predecessor. Sometimes it's not the BOSS's combat power that really drops, but the audience's aesthetic fatigue.

Similar to this generation's "007". Starting from "Casino Royale", the bosses of each movie are set to be the little minions of the ultimate big boss in the last "Spectre". It stands to reason that he should be much harder to fight than those little scoundrels. 007 is also a lone hero, so if it is impossible to embody the fighting power of this ultimate big boss by besieging and fighting, then he has to rely on blood-seeking whether he can make Bond pay an unprecedented price. But the problem is, in the first "Casino Royale", that BOSS has already preemptively made the blood surge index explode - he almost blew Bond's balls.

How can this make the BOSS in the back do? How can this go beyond? You can't let the ultimate boss in Spectre really blow Bond's balls, can you? As a result, the latter's ultimate big boss showed no stronger combat power than the little bosses under him.

In a word, the relative combat power of BOSS depends on comparison. I think everyone feels that the BOSS ability in "X-Men: Apocalypse" is not good, and the problem is here.

Apocalypse's absolute and relative combat power

Compared with the bunch of bosses above, Apocalypse's absolute combat power is actually quite high.

On the blood-stimulating index, in the big battle, Tianqi broke Kuaiyin's leg, locked Mystique's throat, buried Cyclops alive, stunned the blue devil, and beat up Professor X to the ground in the battle of mind power... quite high.

In terms of the siege index, Apocalypse was not just killed by Qin Ge's phoenix force. Jean has a chance to make the final blow, and it is all up to Magneto, Cyclops, Storm, and Professor X in the mind battle to hold him back. X-Men's fight against Apocalypse is a standard siege. It can be seen that Apocalypse's siege index is also very high.

So Apocalypse's strength alone is actually pretty decent. But once you compare it with the previous bosses of "X-Men", it's over.

In terms of superpowers, Apocalypse is known as reincarnation for thousands of lives, and each rebirth absorbs the superpowers of a mutant. Then it must have one hundred and eighty superpowers, right? But in fact, there are only five superpowers he has shown: (1) help other mutants to upgrade; (2) teleportation; (3) desertification; (4) energy shield and shock wave; (5) shield and Against telepathy.

This is weaker than the Sentinel robot's ability to acquire superpowers in the previous "Future Reversal". The Sentinel robot only needs to play with the X-Men for a few minutes to learn the opponent's superpowers. They have more than one hundred and eighty kinds of superpowers.

And, Apocalypse can't even beat the young Chingley, let alone the completely blackened Phoenix in "X-Men 3: The Last Stand".

Apocalypse's EQ and IQ

What's more terrible is that in addition to combat effectiveness, we will naturally compare the performance of the bosses in other aspects, for example, the emotional intelligence and IQ of the bosses.

Compared with some bosses in the previous "X-Men" series, Apocalypse's emotional intelligence and IQ are a bit worrying.

What is the core of high emotional intelligence? The first is to be patient, to have concentration, and not to be in a hurry. There is a famous marshmallow experiment in psychology. Adults invite a group of children, put the marshmallow in front of them, and make an agreement with them that if they don’t eat it for 15 minutes, the reward will be doubled. As a result, most of the children are still in a hurry and secretly give it to them. After eating, the few children who have the strength to hold back and do not eat are generally more promising than those who are anxious when they grow up.

Look, who is taller than anyone? People who can endure!

Can the apocalypse endure it? Not at all.

It stands to reason that they have been sleeping for almost 5,000 years, so why can't we take it slow? For example, finding the four knights is such an important thing (after all, when I am most vulnerable, I have to rely on the four of them to save my life), but I didn't think about looking for it, and just hurriedly turned the four people who were the easiest to find into the four knights. .

What are the consequences? The consequence is that the four people who were randomly found, Angel, Storm, Spirit Butterfly, and Magneto (only Magneto was reluctantly found), all have simple and rude physical attack abilities when they fight with people. Even when we play online games, we understand that the combination of physics and magic is reliable, but Tianqi doesn't understand. If there are one or two psychic superpowers in the Four Horsemen, I am afraid that the X-Men will not be able to hold out Chingray's madness.

What is the second core of high emotional intelligence? It is to know how to observe words and expressions, and understand people's hearts. At this point, there is no need to analyze more, and Apocalypse continues to fight on the street - four knights, two betrayed.

Look at IQ again.

The purpose of Apocalypse is to survive the fittest and eliminate the weak. The method is to let Magneto perform a major global earthquake, and those who survive after the earthquake are the strong ones. You can understand it with your toes. After such a toss, the last survivors are basically mutants with superpowers. So what he did is no different from the bosses in the previous "X-Men": exterminate humans and leave mutants behind.

This matter, in "X-Men 2", Magneto did it once. His method is simply to take advantage of the brainwashed Professor X when he is connected to the supercomputer, and give him instructions to let him connect to the supercomputer. After all human brains kill them all.

And this opportunity, in "X-Men: Apocalypse", appeared almost exactly once. Apocalypse connected the brains of the world through Professor X. At this time, it is obvious that the super-brain can kill all human beings. How much effort does it take to cause the subsequent earthquake? But Apocalypse just let this opportunity go.

If the Magneto in "X-Men 2" could cross into "X-Men: Apocalypse", he would definitely grab Apocalypse's neck and roar:

Are you stupid?

Are you stupid?

Are you stupid?

The second BOSS who tried to exterminate humans and leave mutants was Sebastian Shaw in "X-Men: First Class". His method is to trigger a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union by manipulating the Cuban missile crisis. In nuclear radiation, humans will perish and mutants will flourish.

This opportunity, in "X-Men: Apocalypse", is also reproduced as it is. The chance still came when Apocalypse connected the brains of the world through Professor X, and Apocalypse mastered the launch button of the world's nuclear weapons at this time. Isn't that what the boss Sebastian Shaw in "X-Men: First Class" worked hard for? But what Apocalypse did was to shoot all nuclear weapons into the sky.

If Sebastian Xiao could crawl out of the grave, he would definitely grab Apocalypse's neck and roar:

Are you stupid?

Are you stupid?

Are you stupid?

The previous work forgot to leave a hand, and the sequel was forced to death. This is Apocalypse - the fate of a sequel boss.

Text: Wei Zhichao


A little personal stuff, my new book published in 2020:

Attack on the Mind: New Psychology for Optimizing Thinking and Acting Wisely
8.3
Wei Zhichao Wang Xiaowei / 2020 / Machinery Industry Press

View more about X-Men: Apocalypse reviews

Extended Reading

X-Men: Apocalypse quotes

  • [deleted scene]

    Charles Xavier: [to Storm] You're not comfortable with all this, are you? You're not like them.

    Ororo Munroe: Don't try to get in my head.

    Charles Xavier: I don't have to read your mind to know what it is you're thinking. You're not a killer.

    Ororo Munroe: You don't know me. You didn't grow up in a place where superstition and dark religion hold a lot more sway than your degrees, Professor. I barely survived my own village, my own family. They all thought I was a curse on the Earth.

    Charles Xavier: Are you going to prove them right? Are you going to prove them right?

  • [deleted scene]

    Kurt Wagner: Where are you from?

    Jubilee: Beverly Hills.

    Kurt Wagner: Ah, the hills! It must be beautiful, I've never been to the mountains.