Why Manchester United and X-Men: Apocalypse are the perfect match

"Apoca-who?"

By now you'll no doubt have seen the crime against the internet that is Manchester United's promotional video for X-Men: Apocalypse. In case you're lucky enough to have swerved it, watch it here. If we had to sit through it and now want to soak our eyeballs in bleach, then so do you...

Anything for the team you say, @WayneRooney? Good luck! #XMenApocalypse https://t.co/ym1XtMansq

— Manchester United (@ManUtd) May 20, 2016

It is of course part of United's "groundbreaking global partnership" with film distributor 20th Century Fox. We've previously seen a similar effort at 'brand-merger' featuring Deadpool, but that was nothing on this. Now scoff as you may at the remarkably shite premise and Wayne Rooney's arse-clenchingly bad acting, but the collaboration between the Red Devils and misfit mutants actually makes perfect sense. That's because the parallels between film and football team are remarkable. Previous big screen X-Men outings have been mixed, but both X-Men: Days of Future Past and X-Men: First Class are revered as exemplars of the genre. They managed to combine a multitude of characters in complex and cohesive storylines, whilst entertaining the masses. The overwhelming consensus about Apocalypse is that it's a sprawling, expensive mess. There are brief moments of brilliance, but essentially it's a group of highly-paid stars who are mostly phoning in their performances under lazy and out-dated direction. Worst of all, it has been overtaken by more successful and inventive rivals. Remind you of anything? If the parallels aren't jarring enough, take a look at some of these genuine movie reviews with certain words removed. They're so relevant to Louis van Gaal's Manchester United that it hurts...

"The scale overwhelms the characters, who are largely void of motivation or purpose." - Rich Phippen, Sky Movies "________ is a bloated affair boasting too many characters and too little momentum." - Jason Best, Movie Talk "Has an identity crisis while suffering the hubris of assuming ________ are too big to fail." - Cameron Williams, The Popcorn Junkie "A low point...not incompetent exactly, but flat and stale, its rote grandiosity belying a total lack of substance." - Jake Wilson, The Age "Messier and heavier than ________ past, this is not so much the next step in the ________ evolution as a failed callback to past glories." - Helen O'Hara, Empire "________ and ________ have rarely seemed so disinterested as they do for much of this." - Josh Slater-Williams, The Skinny "About precisely nothing...overshadowed by clichés, implausibilities, and missed opportunities." - MaryAnn Johanson, Flick Filosopher "An upsetting failure that sets the franchise back ten years." - Alex Leadbeater, What Culture "________ has stopped being relevant in a genre he helped create." - Yago Garcia, Cinemania

It is somewhat fitting that the whole thing ends with a badly performing Wayne Rooney looking confused and slightly lost whilst everything crumbles around him.