Apocalypse: A Nigerian cinema story (SPOILERS)

By Rachel Jafojo 

A couple of my cousins, brother and I decided to see X-Men: apocalypse on opening night in Lagos.  Any Lagos cinema goer would tell you that Marvel movies are big business here and trying to get tickets on opening night at the Palms would be an exercise in futility seeing as we all work and are not that die hard.  We settled on the 11.15pm showing at the Film House cinema in Surulere. I am a die-hard Film House person because the bants are quite frankly unparalleled.

We were fortunate to sit next to probably one of the biggest fans of the franchise.  He was absolutely enraptured and proceeded to give is a blow by blow of every single plot twist, character development or possible future dialogue that was relevant.

 He reminded us that Erik lost his parents in Auschwitz, that the monster in the box had to be Wolverine with loud gasps of ‘OSHE, GET IT!!!!!’ 

He was by no means alone in his excitement.  We all know the cast of X-men very well and know what other franchises they have been in.  We all also have probably watched every previous movie. Why else would we risk our cars being stolen in Surulere by watching a movie that late? I digress.

There was a LOT of clapping when anything major blew up or occurred (so like the entire movie).  A crowd favorite had to be when Erik’s secret son took the biggest punch of the movie as well as single handedly rescued everyone from Dr. Xavier’s school.  The crowd LOST THEIR SHIT screaming!!!!

My personal highlights throughout the night include…. ‘ERIK DON’T YOU KNOW HE’S YOUR SON!!!!’ 

 

And ‘GO SANSA!! GO YOU PHOENIX!!’ by a lady in the back

 

And when Stan Lee showed as he is wont to and someone said ‘Baba we missed you!!!!’

And not to mention in the end when Mystique was rallying the newly re-formed x-men someone yelled ‘DON’T YOU KNOW THIS IS NOT THE HUNGER GAMES, RELAX!’ 

 

I cried with laughter.  I couldn’t even be annoyed at the interruptions. They were bloody imaginative!

We didn’t wait for the end credits… cos it was 2am and it was Surulere.  I’m entirely game to watch it at another site though.