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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?
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