Director: Bryan Singer
By Alex Watson
Sadly X-Men: Apocalypse marks a low point for Bryan Singers tenure in this Marvel Franchise. Everything we know and love is there is this feature, but too many adjustments and new character injections are what drags this piece down. It is also not helped by its confusing script and flat storytelling. Changing the character arcs and timelines has been in place since First Class rolled onto screens, but here it is just unbearable.
Rising from his tomb underneath the pyramids after many millenniums, Egyptian God En Sabur Nur/Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac) plots to drag humanity down to its depths and rebuild a better world. In 1983 society, Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) is attempting to establish a school and has come across a talented by trouble protege Jean Grey (Sophie Turner). Meanwhile, Magneto (Michael Fassbender) has tried to live a normal life until tragedy strikes. When Apocalypse threats to ruin earth, each X-Men has his own conflict.
We all want to love X-Men: Apocalypse, but its moral compass just seems to be skewed. Magneto once again is toying with the idea of being both good and evil. Living in Poland he has settled down with a wife and child before (SHOCK HORROR!) tragedy strikes. Xavier still believes there is good in the man, despite he has routinely betrayed him and committed numerous murders. Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) is also beginning to sink and in this one, she made out to be too much of a do-gooder. Her rousing speeches don't feel genuine and the moral ambiguousness that worked so well has vanished. The new recruits Cyclops (Tye Sheridan) and Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee) makes the strongest impression and give us a key reminder of why we loved these characters before. The pain of youth and curse of their powers go give this picture a much needed emotional relevance.
Things start so well when we see Nightcrawler forced to fight the underwhelming Angel (Ben Hardy) in a rage in the cage match. This is as many thrills as the first hour will provide as Singer then insists of bouncing his audience from story to story to set us up for later. Sadly from this point the story becomes muddled and many of the ideas Singer probably wished to include get stranded. Quicksilver (Evan Peters) who was so effective in Days of Future Past is unable to replicate his form here and also due a questionable plot change it leaves us scratching our head. Jean Turner comes across a promising reboot, but here rather frosty character is hard to warm too. Though her inability to control what is a vastly powerful mind does earn a few extra points
The biggest sin of X-Men Apocalypse comes from its flat and unthreatening villain. All of us growing watching or reading the X-Men cartoons loved Apocalypse as the big bad of the franchise. In this universe is a boring and forgettable presence. Showing his backstory provides us with precious little as we see him transported into the body of a young man. After his transformation, he looks more like a replication of Ivan Ooze from Power Rangers than a God with unlimited powers. The whole picture seems to him going around and absorbing other people's powers. His intentions and his hatred for the modern day are never made explicitly clear but we know he wishes to punish them. How he convinces lonely and unbalanced mutants to join his cause doesn't raise any thrills and despite Oscar Isaac's best efforts, this just feels like a huge letdown.
Even the X-Men performances don't grip us like they should do, Michael Fassbender is beginning to struggle with the eternal good and evil conflict of Magneto. Singer should just choose the direction and let Fassbender do this thing because when he does, he is magnificent at it. James McAvoy, as usual, is great (if underused) as the professor but Jennifer Lawrence's complete redirection as Mystique doesn't feel right. She is settling more into physical aspects of this role, but making her a hero is step back. Kodi Smit-McPhee and Tye Sheridan are marked out well as the new blood of the franchise. SMP in particular is able to project the confusion and vulnerability that makes Nightcrawler so great. Also, he rocks his Michael Jackson Thriller jacket!
On the whole X-Men: Apocalypse is just another big budget blockbuster gone south in what has been a bad year for superhero films. Back to the drawing board boys because the old ideas are becoming stale.
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