After the fun of Deadpool, the glumness of Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice, then the dizzying heights of Captain America Civil War, we are back to the glum of X-Men; but that’s not necessarily a bad thing - it’s what X-Men has always been about and most of the time, it’s worked out well for them. So how does Bryan Singer’s fourth attempt at creating a cohesive X-Men universe go at surviving the Apocalypse?
After a return to form with X-Men Days Of Future Past, Bryan Singer hit the reset button on the whole universe in a vain attempt to remove X-Men The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine from existence. So now we find ourselves in the 1983 where all the characters look the same age that they did in X-Men First Class despite the 20 year gap between stories. Anyway, the first mutant Apocalypse, a delusional mutant from the times of Ancient Egypt, who has a severe God-complex and a grab-bag of powers gets buried for several millennia at the beginning of the film. Once resurrected, he becomes Hell-bent on destroying the world for well, reasons, and he organises four horsemen to help him on his quest to turn the world into a pixelated wasteland of ruined iconic landmarks. These horsemen include Michael Fassbender’s Magneto and who gives a f*ck because the rest of them share about ten lines of dialogue between them for the length of this overly long film.
Look, I’m a massive fan of the X-Men franchise, I read the comics as a kid and if it wasn’t for Bryan Singer’s first two stellar X-Men films we wouldn’t have the comic book movies that we have today. But after 16 years, five sequels, three spin-offs and multiple ridiculously thin-reasons to ensure that Wolverine, Professor X, Magneto and Mystique get as much screen time as possible, you just can’t help but feel that they have finally run out of ideas - sure it’s only taken nine films in total to finally have characters look like their comic book counterparts, but even then, that is saved until the very end of this movie.
The film does feature the biggest action scenes to date for an X-Men film, but unfortunately the care-factor teeters along at mostly zero often because we are rehashing origin stories of origins we’ve already seen before. It’s almost like Bryan Singer wasn’t happy with how other directors handled said origins and decided to do his own versions of these moments we’ve already seen before. Granted many of these moments look cool, but it doesn’t shake the fact that we’ve seen it all before and that it doesn’t feel fresh. I guess this begs the big question of whether Bryan Singer let his own ego overrule his ability to make a film akin to his usual high standards when it comes to the X-Men films.
The film features some highs and lows. The most obvious high is the return of Evan Peter’s Quicksilver who steals every scene he’s in and has another sequence that leaves his last one in the dust. The films lows are ultimately due to the fact that the movie has so many ideas running at the same time that it never really knows what to focus on. There are many scenes that feel completely unnecessary and written in just to fill in some time or to retread stuff from previous movies.
At one point, the film makes a very deliberate dig at X-Men The Last Stand by saying that “we can all agree that the third film is always the worst”, this may be good for a cheap laugh, however I don’t think Singer and writer Simon Kinberg realise just how many similarities this film shares with the Brett Ratner directed third entry: both films remove Professor X from the story early on to give more screen time to certain fan-favourite actors, both films feature huge pixelated third-act destruction on a level that looks cool, but ultimately borders on the absurd, and both films feature shameless fan servicing that doesn’t respect the mythology set up in the previous films, nor helps to further the story that’s being told.
Overall, Jennifer Lawrence and her occasional X-Men, featuring Oscar Isaac in prosthetics, is enjoyable for the most part, frustrating at other times, but ultimately a forgettable entry in the long running X-Men franchise. Despite taking a dig at third entries in film series, it has become it’s own self-fulfilling prophesy: it’s not the worst, but when the theme is “survival of the fittest”, X-Men Apocalypse is certainly the weakest of the series.
X-Men Apocalypse gets Two and a Half out of Five Stars (or Two and a Half out of Five extras dressing like it’s the 80’s in the film, whilst the rest dress like it’s 2006 or something)
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