X-Men: Apocalypse | Movie Reviews

Trailer hype strikes again.

Man, oh man... Now what to say about this movie?

Now, don’t get me wrong. X-Men: Apocalypse was an enjoyable movie. But I just gotta say... I’m actually quite disappointed with it. It’s a huge case of the age-old “trailer hype”. As in, the trailers were far more exciting than the actual movie itself.

Now, if you’ve been following since the post-credits sequence of X-Men: Days of Future Past, you’ll note that the Apocalypse storyline has been teased for a while now. Being a follow-up of the past timeline from said movie, the story again follows Charles, Erik, and Raven in the past, now in the 1980’s. Basically, ten years have gone by since the events of Days of Future Past, and its been a good ten years for everyone.

Raven herself has been traveling around, rescuing various mutants from whatever shitty life they’ve been stuck in. Meanwhile, Erik himself has settled down and started a new life under the name Henryk, where he works an honest job and lives with a loving wife and daughter. Charles, on the other hand, has officially begun his school for the “gifted”.

However, things go south after Moira (previously seen in X-Men: First Class) unwittingly restores power to the long-buried “first mutant”, known as Apocalypse (by, you guessed it, leaving a rug folded), and his reawakening sends a shockwave throughout the world. Said shockwave knocks loose equipment in the warehouse where Erik works, and he is forced to use his powers in order to save a worker’s life.

Despite saving this worker, however, there is no gratitude. Everyone has discovered he is a mutant. And he rushes home to get his family so that they can leave. However, his daughter has gone missing. He and his wife go to find her, only to discover that the police have her. To save her, Erik confesses that his identity as Henryk was false, and that he was indeed the Magneto that tried to kill the president ten years ago.

The police let his daughter go, and he lets them arrest him without resistance. However, his daughter, who has powers as well, begins to summon crows in her fright. In the chaos, one of the police officers fires an arrow that kills both Erik’s wife and daughter. Erik finally lets go of that last bit of humanity within him, and kills the police, and sets off on a quest for vengeance.

Raven, on the other hand, hears about this, and goes to Charles to let him know what has happened so that they can help him. Aaaaaand that’s about all the story I’ll spoil for you.

Let’s just say that the way this story opens is fantastic. And again, Michael Fassbender completely fucking steals the show as Magneto. Unfortunately, the story outside of Charles and Erik is a bit lackluster.

Apocalypse is simply a bland villain. He does almost nothing noteworthy except make other characters even stronger, which ultimately leads to his downfall. In the end, he was defeated simply because he didn’t fucking do anything. He just let the heroes kill him.

The other villains are kinda better. Storm’s fall to villainy was kinda sudden, but she worked well for the plot. Angel, as usual, is pretty stupid, but at least they used him better than they did in The Last Stand. Psylocke was awesome, and I’m actually upset she wasn’t used more in the film.

As for the heroes, they consistently made the film seem like it was about Mystique yet again, but I really felt like the main cast of this consisted of Cyclops, Jean, and Nightcrawler. Hell, Charles, Erik, and Quicksilver were far more important characters than Mystique here. I have no clue why they even bothered to cast Jubilee, though. She was in like, a grand total of 4 minutes of footage.

Special effects-wise, they were on point, as they have been in the last couple films. We’re treated to another awesome and humorous Quicksilver sequence, though I don’t think it matches up to the original Days of Future Past one.

Gah. I’m just finding it hard to talk about this movie. It was an enjoyable experience, but damn was it disappointing. There was a lack of focus here. It never really decides who it wants the hero to be. The story itself is kind of weak after the first half hour or so, and Apocalypse is by far the least interesting villain in the film franchise thus far. Even this far into the film series, we’re still getting the same ol’ “LIFE FOR MUTANTS IS HARD” flak. We get it.

Hell, the best part of the movie was in fact one that I think actually kinda detracted from the experience overall, and it was one very expected (though lengthy) cameo a little over halfway into the film (coughWolverinecough). Hell, if they went with the original idea and made him the main character again, it probably would have been more interesting of a film.

I dunno how to feel really about X-Men: Apocalypse. It’s a good movie, but easily the worst of the First Class trilogy. If they had made the film a little more focused, it definitely would have been significantly better. It failed to utilize its huge character cast as well as movies like Captain America: Civil War did, and that’s where the lack of focus comes from.

OVERALL RATING:

6.5/10