Where to begin with this dud-filled piece of dudly crap that is
X-Men: Apocalypse... perhaps with some positives:
1. The costumes were generally pretty good
2. Storm - she gets a solid yes
And those may be the only good things I have to say about this movie. I'll give some neutral credit to the music and music selection, though the X-Men series on the whole, for something that's a good 6-plus movies in now, has still FAILED to create a proper score with recurring themes, leitmotifs, etc. The closest thing to is it John Ottman's title credits theme (done with wonderful aplomb in Days of Future Past).
The X-Men series has a great distinction, to me, of having every entry be generally entertaining, though flawed in various degrees. Yes, even both X-Men 3 and X-Men Origins: Wolverine were fun (though perhaps the heavily negative bias set my expectations super low); the musical scores of both definitely helped, as well.
Yet here we are with Apocalypse... I was excited for the film when the teaser at the end of DoFP first played, but shortly after had a sinking feeling in my gut when it was announced that Bryan Singer was returning to direct.
Bryan Singer is not a good director.
At the very least, not anymore. Or if he is, he certainly needs a LOT of help with writing and should consider changing some of his Hellfire Club (inner circle); they are doing him no favors. For example, DoFP's future sequences were the best parts, but the 70s-set character driven story with Magneto, Professor X and Mystique was boring as hell. The one great sequence being Quicksilver, which was a mere 40ish minutes into the movie and created such a stupid loophole that was underutilized (recruit the damn guy!).
Which leads us to the convoluted, poorly edited, mediocre-acted mess that is Apocalypse.
Point blank: who's story are we following? I don't care about anyone or anything that's happening due to three reasons:
1. Recycled storylines/a sense of been there, done that
2. Too many characters/not enough screen time
3. Things happening for no good reason
There's no point in going into the details for any particular character, as they're all underwhelming and poorly developed, save for maybe the new gen of kids. As well, any time something interesting is about to happen (e.g. Quicksilver and Magneto), the story goes into the wrong direction.
Mystique/Jennifer Lawrence doesn't care at all about being in the movie, followed closely by Magneto/Fassbender (though whether he's acting as a burnt-out character or just being himself is another question). McAvoy as Prof X has never really done anything for me (save for Fassbender's Magneto). Neither of the two have the gravitas of Patrick Stewart of Ian McKellan, story taking place earlier in their timelines be damned.
And FFS Oscar Isaac's Apocalypse... So much wrong. The writing is certainly the biggest travesty, but Isaac himself was miscast. Such a thankless role. The creative direction here, again due to the writing, was so bad that it's hard to really properly comment. The changing consciousness, absurd power levels, random story direction and lack of actual comic book characterization similarities form a giant suffering of underwhelming (I have no idea if that sentence/phrase makes sense, but I'm going with it). Michael Clarke Duncan would have been awesome. The Rock would have been awesome. Hell, James Earl Jones in makeup would have been awesome.
Also, why are we even leaping decade by decade? Who oversees the story direction for this franchise? Are they trying to make it like a TV series or movie serials? Gah...
The editing is bad, jumping around with poor character choices. Again, convoluted. Hell, it's so bad it's making my review convoluted. I have no idea what direction I'm going in, the film has rubbed off on me that much...
Psylocke. Have to mention her, so she can be just as "there" as she was in the actual movie.
For a film that goes out of its way to make fun of X-Men 3 and the third entries of trilogies, I'd rather watch that one any day. Singer even re-used some of the same ideas fans hated about that entry! What stupidity is this?
Apocalypse is a hot mess of a movie and a great example of how important story construction and paying attention in the editing room needs to be - so much to cut from this film, yet I'm not sure if there's enough of a core story present to save it.
Bland, unfocused, messy, stupid.
I watched the extended cut of Batman vs Superman after this, which looks like the Godfather in comparison.
You know what would have been better than this? Hire Stephen Sommers to remake his remake of The Mummy but using X-Men, with Apocalypse as Imhotep. Follow the young kids as they're on a random trip to Egypt and accidentally summon Apocalypse, who falls in line with the Brotherhood as they piece him back together, etc. etc. Make it more of an adventure/event movie.
Long story short... NOT RECOMMENDED, with a Bret Hart-approved 4/10.
