X-Men: Apocalypse Review

X-Men: Apocalypse Review 

We’re almost done with my X-Men review series, which means Deadpool & Wolverine is almost here. Today we’re talking about X-Men: Apocalypse, one of the lesser regarded films of the franchise. Do I agree with those statements or do I think the film is better than people give it credit for? Let’s get started!

The Good

The best thing about this movie is they do some really nice character work in here. The big example of this would be Magneto and like all of these movies show you that Michael Fassbender is a great actor. They really give Magneto this emotional arc where he just wants to live a normal life. He tried to have the life that Charles had that made him good. But he wasn’t able to have that, so once again he views humanity as the problem so he sides with Apocalypse so mutants can rule. That’s always been something as a part of Magneto’s character. He’s a guy that saw humanity take away his mother, his wife, and his daughter all of the people that matter most to him, humans took them away. It makes sense as to why he’s once again evil, he respects Charles. Upon rewatching this entire franchise, they really make you care and sympathize with Magneto and this is one of those examples. 

From there, I always find it fun to be in the world of X-Men with mutants. Since all our mutants have a different power set, that means there’s a lot of variety in what they can do. Quicksilver is this guy that has super speed, once again he gets a moment to shine where he shows his speed. It’s not quite as good as the Quicksilver sequence we got Days of Future Past, but it’s still fun. Cyclops is learning about his abilities and how to control them, so he gets a bit of an arc in that. You get some funny moments when he first shows up at the school. They use Nightcrawler in some fun ways, especially during some of the action sequences. This movie does a good job of showing off the different power sets of our X-Men and what they can bring to certain situations. 

Finally, the score for these First Class, X-Men prequel films are pretty good. This movie was scored by John Ottman who’s been working on several X-Men films since X2: X-Men United. The main theme that plays during the opening and closing credits is one that sticks with me. This is probably an unpopular opinion but the score in the X-Men movies is more iconic then the score from the animated tv show (don’t kill me). All through-out the movie there’s just these great pieces of music, whether it’s in quieter scenes or the action sequences they just pop and stand out to me. 

The Bad

There’s a lot of problems with this movie, it’s frustrating because I think they had the pieces to make a really good X-Men movie. I think the big problem with this film is they tried to cram way too much into this one movie. Where they had a 10 year time jump so we have to catch up where everybody is at in life, they want to show the origin story for Cyclops and Jean Grey, introduce Apocalypse, give Quicksilver his time to shine, bring back Stryker and McTaggert, and do all of this stuff that doesn’t mean any of it gets enough screen time. I praised the Magneto stuff in the film, as I was watching I was thinking to myself “this should have been its own movie”. You tell a Magneto spin-off focusing on him with a new family, it has a similar ending that leads into Magneto’s character arc in X-Men: Apocalypse. You give that plot line 2 hours to be developed. You can cut Stryker and McTaggert from the film, rewatching it they don’t serve much purpose in the film. You take out all of the fluff and you have a movie that’s about the origin story for Cyclops and Jean Grey with Apocalypse as the villain. Have Storm be a good guy, why they made Storm a villain in the movie is weird. We all know that she doesn’t stay evil, so make Storm a good guy. Maybe you somehow make Jean one of Apocalypse’s Four Horsemen. Where Apocalypse is making Jean an offer she can’t refuse to help control her powers, maybe that can set up Jean’s turn into Phoenix in the next film. Cut away a bunch of the fluff and make the pieces more interesting. This movie had a two year turnaround from Days of Future Past, they should have put this movie out in 2017 give it three years. If they made more time and they weren’t trying to rush this movie out, maybe it could have worked and been better. 

Since there is so much going on, so many characters and plot lines the movie is long. To date, it's the longest X-Men movie at 2 hours and 24 minutes. And you feel that the run time, you can feel that this movie is nearly 2 ½ hours long. Like I said, if they cut down on this movie it didn’t need to be 2 hours and 24 minutes long. Both X2 and Days of Future Past have a lot going on, there's a lot of plot lines and characters. But those movies were 10-12 minutes shorter and balanced everything much better. This movie is longer but fumbles with all of its plot lines. 

Unfortunately, one of the film’s biggest faults is the usage of Apocalypse. On paper, having Apocalypse be the villain in an X-Men movie is great. Apocalypse is one of the great X-Men villains of time. Especially following up on the epic scope of Days of Future Past, Apocalypse is a great way to go. Wow, they really messed up Apocalypse. Once again, the film had too much going on so they didn’t have enough time to develop everything. Apocalypse was a victim of that, Charles Xavier doesn’t learn about Apocalypse’s threat until over an hour into the film. So we’re already ⅓ of the way through the film where we our heroes learn about him. Beyond that, they didn’t characterize him in a great way. They treat him as some generic apocalyptic villain that doesn’t have any personality, his motivation is he wants power and to rule. They do nothing interesting with him, they give him the look of Ivan Ooze from Power Rangers. They wasted Oscar Isaac’s talents, he’s a great actor that can bring a lot to the role. And you forget that Oscar Isaac, coming off of The Force Awakens is in this movie playing one of the X-Men’s most iconic villains. If they do Apocalypse in the MCU at some point, hopefully they can get him right. 

Finally, there’s some really cringy moments here. Especially some of the stuff with Charles Xavier when he reunites with Moira, it doesn’t feel like something that Charles would do. They tried to force humor into the scenes and it felt so forced. I think having humor is good, make the humor come naturally this film doesn’t do that. 

Final Thoughts: X-Men: Apocalypse is one of the most disappointing films of the genre. This should have been an easy win for the franchise, there’s a great movie buried inside of the lengthy run time, convoluted plot, and underwhelming villain. And all of the negatives overshadow the great aspects of the film. Expect this film to rank rather low on my X-Men franchise ranking. 

The Score: 7.3/10 (C)