X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) - Some qualities aren't enough to lift burdened franchise spectacle

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The character-jammed poster for Bryan Singer's X-Men: Apocalypse

X-Men: Apocalypse is the 6th movie in the X-Men franchise (not counting the two Wolverine movies and Deadpool), directed by the series' main director, great New-Yorker filmmaker Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects (1995)). It is written by Simon Kinberg (Fantastic Four (2015)) with story by Kinberg, Singer, Michael Dougherty (Krampus (2015)) and Dan Harris (X-Men 2 (2003)).

An ancient mutant from Egypt known as Apocalypse has been gathering mutant superpowers for centuries and is awakened by the hand of his few modern followers in the 1980s. His ambition to dominate humans and mutants alike requires a firm response from the not yet formed X-Men.

Apocalypse starts out with a fascinating sequence in ancient Egypt that introduces the Apocalypse character, who is a formidable, great villain portrayed by Oscar Isaac (Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)), who is unrecognizable and presumably spent countless painstaking hours being made up to play the part. Apocalypse seems especially inspired by Boris Karloff's look as The Mummy (1932).
The film later references The Exorcist (1973), slyly disses Brett Ratner's X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) and has a good time with 1980s fashion and music. The X-Men films are interesting, because they create characters with fantastical powers, treat them with seriousness and put them squarely in seemingly real circumstances, historical, social or otherwise. SPOILER In Apocalypse, we return, for instance, to Auschwitz, which Magneto destroys in a matter of seconds.
The film's funniest, coolest scene sees Quicksilver (Evan Peters (Adult World (2013))) save all the mutants from professor Xavier's exploding academy to the sweet sounds of Eurythmics' Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This). This is a refreshing change of tone in an otherwise brooding and very long movie.
X-Men: Apocalypse is also a busy movie. - Too busy for its own good. It storms past points that it would have made sense to give us logical answers to, (such as; where did all those nukes sent flying into space go?) The third act is wildly overlong. One part that was especially unnecessary: SPOILER Putting some of our friends in General Stryker's prison for a good long time and bringing in Wolverine for a completely redundant appearance. Fans will already know the Stryker/Wolverine storyline from more than one previous X-Men movie, so its reappearance here in an already bloated final part of Apocalypse is a shame. The X-Men universe is a character-driven one, which is mainly a strength, as we are treated to new and reappearing characters in each movie. In Apocalypse, the apocalyptic is balanced with some high school movie-like elements featuring Tye Sheridan (Mud (2012)) and Sophie Turner (Barely Lethal (2015)) as Cyclops and Jean, but despite being both young and good-looking, their budding romance is tame. (It never was interesting when it was James Marsden and Famke Janssen portraying the characters either.)
The franchise's key characters, played by James McAvoy (Filth (2013)) and Michael Fassbender (Fish Tank (2009)), have a Xavier-Magneto relationship dynamic that by now feels repetitive, which also bears down on this heavy spectacle. This X-Men doesn't get the magic back of the first couple of films either.

Related posts:
 
The X-Men franchise: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - A BAM in every direction for the tired franchise 
X-Men: First Class (2011) - Vaughn's handsome if cluttered reboot
 

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 234 mil. $
Box office: Not out yet
= Too early to say
[X-Men: Apocalypse premiered May 9 (London) and runs 144 minutes. It was filmed from April - August 2015 in Canada, with additional shooting in September and January 2016. X-Men: Apocalypse is rotten at 51 % with a 5.6 critical average on Rotten Tomatoes.] 

What do you think of X-Men: Apocalypse?

X-Men: First Class (2011) - Vaughn's handsome if cluttered reboot

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A new band of actors stand ready to carry on the X-Men franchise on this poster for Matthew Vaughn's X-Men: First Class

QUICK REVIEW:

In the 1960s, the existence of mutants becomes known by the US government, and the mutants get involved in the nuclear race.

Stars James McAvoy (The Last King of Scotland (2006)), Jennifer Lawrence (The Hunger Games (2012)), Michael Ironside (Total Recall (1990)) and January Jones (Mad Men (2007-15)) are, like many of the film's fine special effects, pleasures to behold. Unfortunately, the story handling here in First Class, either a reboot of the X-Men franchise and/or simply the beginning of a second feature trilogy, depending on who you ask, leaves much to be wished for, and, clocking in at 132 minutes, it doesn't go easy on its audience lengthwise.
It is written by Ashley Miller, Zack Stentz (Thor (2011), both), Jane Goldman (Stardust (2007)) and its English director Matthew Vaughn (Kick-Ass (2010)), with Bryan Singer (X-Men 2 (2003)) and Sheldon Turner (Up in the Air (2009)) contributing story. - No wonder the story's a little jumbled with all those chefs around the pots!

Related review:

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - A BAM in every direction for the tired franchise 

Watch the trailer for the film here

Cost: 140-160 mil. $
Box office: 353.6 mil. $
= Minor flop
[First Class opened #1 to a 55.1 mil. $ domestic opening weekend, on par with the first X-men (2000), (before accounting for inflation), and abroad, the film peaked at #2, seen collectively. It grossed 146.4 mil. $ (41 % of the total gross) in North America. The film's costs of 160 mil. $ were reportedly lowered to around 140 mil. $ after tax rebates from its production countries.]

What do you think of X-Men: First Class?

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - A BAM in every direction for the tired franchise

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The poster for  Bryan Singer's X-Men: Days of Future Past

X-Men 4 (not counting the origins movie X-Men: First Class (2011) or the Wolverine films (2009 and 2013)), is a huge event movie that has strong hold over large audiences the world over, as is evident from its impressive B.O. numbers.
In case you're wondering, my three stars is a very generous assessment of the film in my opinion.
It seems almost impossible to give an outline of Future Past's plot without either being too general or go into too much detail, but trying might be fun, so here goes:
The future is terrible due to anti-mutant 'sentinels' that emulate mutant powers to defeat them (successfully), a technology based on Mystique's mutant powers of shape-shifting after her capture by her nemesis, Dr. Bolivar Trask, a powerful weapons scientist, in the mid-1970s. To prevent sentinel-extinction, the X-Men collaborate to send Wolverine back in time to make Mystique a good girl, who doesn't try to kill Trask - or President Nixon! - and thereby provide the need for the sentinels. But this is a difficult task, getting the younger, apathetic Xavier to wake up and smell the morning coffee, - and get him and Magneto to meet and agree on anything. Their oppositional personalities clash again in Future Past, one a hopeful, the other a skeptic.
Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook (2012)) gets a chance to play empowered angry-woman, who may or may not turn good, in the last second, of course, ( - which do you think it is...?)
The most interesting new character is Peter/Quicksilver (Evan Peters (Adult World (2013)), a young ADD-type guy, who can think and act really, really fast. Peters is energetic and well into the character and brings some fun into an otherwise very self-serious sci-fi action adventure. Other young performers, like Booboo Stewart as 'Warpath' (The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010)) is pretty much wasted due to his ridiculous make-up and costume, which is a shame.
Future Past is not generally a movie with any great actors' work in it; the universe isn't geared for that, and the ones singled out here are minor nuggets; the big guys, James McAvoy (The Last Station (2009)) and Michael Fassbender (12 Years a Slave (2013)), so good actors by themselves elsewhere, can't bring much to X-Men.

Fassbender at one point gets in contact with the power-figures in the human world by removing a stadium (!) and putting it on top of the White House, then ripping out the vault that they all hide in, and tearing it open of the lawn. His lacking subtlety seems symptomatic for a movie that stomps around different times and locations without much drive behind it, - what is it all for, one wonders, (if one has fallen out of the universe, as I clearly have.)
X-Men (2000) was really good; X-2 (2003) was even better; X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) by Brett Ratner (Red Dragon (2002)) was humongous and not very good. By X-Men: Days of Future Past, I have lost my enthusiasm for the series, which seems to have now developed into a possibly never-ending franchise. All things have a time, and for me, X-Men had a time, and that time lies clearly in the past.

The details:

Regarding the curious plot of Future Past, a nonsensical title if there ever was one, production people of the movie have said that with a time traveling movie, 'you can do anything'. Meaning that the time travel philosophy of parallel universes etc. makes everything feasible narrative-wise. Which is really only true, as long as you can get your audience to come along with you. With Future Past, I wondered why, - in all the other X-Men movies, - we've never heard of the sentinels, which were created and developed in a 50-year period following the mid-1970's? (Thus probably should have been an issue in all the other movies as well... - Is it all a parallel universe? Does anything have any consequence at all? - Not good questions for any movie.)
All logic and cohesive thought comes to an end sometime in a superhero franchise like X-Men, which likes to somersault around with multiple characters, times, places... This one also continually relies on the audience being familiar with the previous films, which is another weakness in my mind.
In the end, the X-Men are popcorn and multi-plex and merchandise fodder above all else. The Beast character most incarnates this, as he time and again grows from nice man into blue, ravenous wolf-like monster; pure eye-popping spectacle and very little else.
Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects (1995)), the director behind the two first and this X-Men film is the man who has shaped the franchise as it is more than anyone. As I zone out of the X-Men universe, I get more interested in Singer's personal problems, as he was accused of raping a boy many years ago while promoting Future Past, which he instantly stopped doing, (with good reason.) That case, and possibly more than the one, go on, as Singer, - one of the most successful directors in the world today, - is poised to direct the next X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) (Zzzzzzzz), but will he be able to? Reality sometimes beats fiction, and this is certainly a case of that, for me, anyway.

Evan Peters as Peter/Quicksilver eating a burger for an X-Men: Days of Future Past photo shoot, a movie mainly about selling and eating, (for the people involved, if you catch my drift)

Watch the trailer here

Budget: 200 mil. $
Box office: 739.6 mil. $ and running
= Big hit

What do you think of the X-Men movies and the newest chapter?
Any thoughts on Bryan Singer's private debacle?