You Know What They Say About the Third One: X-Men: Apocalypse Review

The complaints that the cinema is overloaded with high-budget, superhero, CGI-fest, films is not entirely unfounded. Audiences have received Marvel Studios' films especially well to the point where even if one of their films does not do especially well, everybody goes to see it regardless. Superhero films have become near cultural events in popular culture and are surprisingly the films that are likely getting the most talk at water coolers. The films that really started it all was the original X-Men trilogy, directed by Brian Singer. Previously, superhero films had been campy and ridiculous. This isn't to say that the Tim Burton Batman films are bad or that your nostalgia towards the Christopher Reeve Superman films is unfounded. This points more blame at Joel Schumacher, who set superhero films back several years with both of his installments into the Batman lore. Singer's films were both excellent, though they seem dated now and were followed by Bret Ratner's Last Stand. While Marvel has dominated the superhero cinema scene, the X-Men franchise, owned by Fox, has slowly been getting life breathed back into it. First Class was well received, same with Days of Future Past. Feburary's Deadpool also counts as an X-Men film, though it may be stretching a tiny bit. This now leads us the newest installment into what is becoming a more and more bloated franchise: X-Men Apocalypse.

The new X-Men films have this obsessions with decade long time-skips which confuses the audience because nobody in the cast appears to have aged twenty years. This can possibly be marked down to something in the mutant gene that keeps mutants looking beautiful forever. Anyways, its been about 11 years since the events of Days of Future Past but...nothing has really changed. Mutants are still largely outcasts, the original X-Men team remains scrambled. Charles Xavier is running the school at least, so that's a plus. The plot gets going when the ancient evil, Apocalypse, wakes up, recruits some buddies including Magneto who has been trying to lay low in Poland, and decides he needs to destroy everything and rebuild it anew. It's up to our favorite mutants to go out and stop him. They certainly take a rather roundabout way to do it. The first hour of the film is remarkably slow as it needs many scenes to bring all of our characters into the fold. The plot moves forward strictly out of necessity more than anything and by the time it hits its stride, its about two hours in and you still have around half an hour to sit through.

Luckily for our heroes, Apocalypse takes his time really doing anything. It's actually rather good for us too because we get introduced to Jean Grey, Cyclops, and Nightcrawler, all staples of the X-Men universe. We see a young Scott Summers discover his powers, deal with the ramifications of not being able to control them, and bond with Jean Grey over the fact that their peers fear them. It's all pretty well done. We even get an appearance from Jubilee. However, the problem that the plot has is that it struggles to balance its ensemble cast. The main cast from the previous two films has returned, then you have the introduction of about eight new characters, not to mention fitting in Quicksilver. There's a lot of jumping around and it can be difficult to keep track of everything, even when the film "trims the fat". There's not even enough time to really flesh out the film's titular villain, Apocalypse, whose appearances onscreen are all rather one note. Rather strange for such a long film.

The newest members of the cast are easily the film's most engaging

If Batman v Superman is the lowest on the "funny" scale and something like Guardians of the Galaxy ranks near the top when judging superhero films on this category, then Apocalypse falls squarely in the middle. The previous two installments were fun in their own way. Matthew Vaughn was able to make First Class truly a fun film that also managed to have its serious moments. Days of Future Past was able to strike a delicate balance that managed to highlight the seriousness and severity of the plot. Apocalypse has no idea where it is tonally in any sense. Moments that are meant to be funny some during times that are a little too serious and Singer just can't seem to let any scene play out naturally. Take for example Quicksilver's rescue scene in this film. While technically its brilliant, it comes at one of the film's most serious moments and is followed by another serious moment. The tone whiplash is evident as after his whimsical run through the school to save everyone, we find out he didn't save everyone, and we're supposed to feel sad but how can we after a rescue sequence to the tune of "Sweet Dreams"? This isn't an issue with superhero films specifically, I personally thought that the criticism of BvS "not being funny enough" to be absurd. It's more of a complaint about the tone of films in general and some confusion about why certain decisions were made here. Most notably, the whiplash caused by the Quicksilver scene.

<Spoilers> Then, of course, once you're all out of options you jump the shark by shoehorning in a Wolverine cameo into the middle of the film. The three young X-Men find Weapon X while searching for a way to free their older counterparts. Jean Grey lets Wolverine run loose and he conveniently murders everyone in the facility. We get a touching moment between him and Jean and then he runs off into the distance. Then after that "fun" little diversion, we're taken back to the main plot wondering why exactly we went there aside from that little touch of deus ex machina. This also opens another giant plot hole as to why exactly Wolverine was even at the facility since the last film established that Mystique was posing as Stryker when Wolverine was recovered from the river. Anyways, the whole scene at the Weapon X facility is also rather puzzling and feels uneccessary, though it does give us Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Nightcrawler being awesome, which was entirely welcome. <Spoilers End>

It's unfortunate that the film's villains are so un-engaging

But herein lies the film's biggest problem is that I just didn't care about Apocalypse or his Four Horsemen. They just exist onscreen, their motivations (aside from Magneto and, if you're stretching, Psylocke) are non-existent. For the most part they've just been beaten down and abused and they're looking to strike back. Rather than channel this into something meaningful, the film instead just has them window dress for the whole film, simply just appearing where Apocalypse is, striking poses as he lectures Charles Xavier. Their existence in the film feels frivolous. Angel and Storm are truly wasted as characters but only because the film has to introduce three major X-Men while also balancing out the pre-existing, already rather large, cast from the previous two films. Maybe someday we will get a film that actually does Angel justice. Then of course we come to the film's main villain. Apocalypse is here because the film needs a villain and he decides to insert himself into the plot whenever he feels the need to move things forward. The problem is that often times he doesn't. Isaac's scenes as Apocalypse are plodding and you can feel the pain of a truly fantastic actor as his talents are wasted merely talking in cryptic language for a plot that feels truly played out and boring. Ancient evil wakes up and wants to rule the world, seen it before. Lots of building destruction with no emotional resonance, it's all played out really. Compare this to Civil War which actually took the plot to a more personal place with its villain. While saving the world level stakes are nice, it ignores the personal touches that comic books can have with their characters. What made the previous X-Men installments so good was that they were more grounded.

What really should have been focused on are the new X-Men: Cyclops, Jean Grey, Nightcrawler, Storm, and even Jubilee. The film's best scenes are the one's spent at Xavier's school as these teens begin to bond and come to terms with their powers. It makes you wonder if the film would have been better off without its boring villain and would have been better served bringing things back to a smaller scale. A film that focused on these young versions of familiar characters, learning to master their powers and finding acceptance with who they are has always been at the core of the X-Men as a group and comic book. This does all come together at the climax and, to be honest, the final battle sequence is impressive, if not undermined by the fact there's little buildup to the unleashing of these powers. This, added to the fact that the film makes zero attempt to capitalize on the time period in which the film takes place. I'm told that the film took place in the 80's but aside from some costume choices and one Return of the Jedi reference (which was clearly meant to be a  shot at Ratner's Last Stand and instead ends up reflecting the audience's feelings to this "third" film), I couldn't exactly tell the difference between the world of this film and 2016. Apocalypse struggles to balance its ensemble cast. It functions well enough as you get to see all the characters you've gotten to know. However, despite an eleven year timeskip, nobody has really changed. The character arcs don't move forward for any characters, unless you count Magneto though his entire character arc feels contrived and the film does a very poor job of resolving it. The young cast does show enough promise and the next film looks like it will focus on them, so that's at least something to look forward to.

There's a lot packed into the film, even if sometimes it doesn't seem like it takes full advantage of the talent of its cast

What makes the underwhelmingness of Apocalypse so difficult to take in is it is a really well-made film. The cinematography is fantastic, the musical score is brilliant, and the visuals are, for lack of a better word, slick. The fight choreography towards the end is great and the casting of the film is dead on. It's unfortunate that this is undermined by the film's plodding pace and some actors just appearing bored with their roles (looking at you J-Law).

X-Men: Apocalypse falls into the unfortunate category of not being a bad film while not exactly being a good one either. For films like this, I usually just put them into the category of "aggressively average" in which I film really doesn't do anything to be much better than it currently is. There's action, there's plenty of X-Men being awesome, the cast is truly fantastic even if not everybody really shows up. It introduces some of the most iconic X-Men characters and does a decent enough job world-building. At the same time, its poorly paced, the villains are terrible, and it lacks the charm of the previous two films. It all comes together into a film that's just "fine" or "ok".

My Score: 2/5