51% on Rotten Tomatoes
Chloe's thoughts: It's alright
Watch it if you: Are an X-Men fan or have liked any X-Men film before; Want to watch cool action scenes and don't mind if the humour isn't that great
The EIGHTH film in this series (if I've counted correctly) occurs 10 years after the events of Days of Future Past, and focuses on the ancient mutant Apocalypse, an ancient being rumoured to be the first ever mutant. Several millenia ago, Apocalypse ruled ancient Egypt as En Sabah Nur, and he would lay destruction over any land that did not worship him as God. But now after his deep sleep, he awakens to re-recruit his four horsemen, as he plans to bring a worldwide apocalypse to modern Earth.
Firstly, I went into the movie knowing that the reviews weren't that great for it, and whilst I did actually enjoy this film, I understand why it's caused so much divide in audiences (particularly the film critics). It's nowhere near as great as Days of Future Past, but it's definitely enjoyable. It's also no where near as bad as X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Half of the time, this film is good, and half of the time, this film is bad, so I understand why there are so many mixed reviews on this film.
One of the negatives about this film is that it is really long (nearly 2.5 hours), and that's because there is A LOT happening in this film. We have new characters to look at, new villains, new storylines, and even just catching up with old friends.
The beginning was quite a bit chaotic because of this. It dove straight into things and desperately tried to make an epic stance, but it was just too chaotic and too confusing. Oscar Isaac is great, but Apocalypse's aims and end goals are not really fleshed out, so the entire movie you are left quite confused at exactly what his plan was, or what he even wanted to achieve. As he's recruiting his four horsemen, it's also a bit cheesy. The film tries to establish the time period and setting of the film, but doesn't do it well ("Welcome to the 80s," she said, despite not even knowing that he was not from the 80s).
In fact, most of the film is really cheesy. The dialogue was really really lacking. Often when they tried to be funny, it ended up being lame, or when they tried to be epic, it just became laughable. For example, for the life of me I cannot take true blue Mystique seriously when she wears clothes, so all her pep talks are lost on me. Jennifer Lawrence's delivery also seemed a bit weak in this film, but when she's blue and wearing clothes, it's a lot worse for me.
Having said that, though, I liked how they caught us up on what everyone has been doing since the end of Days of Future Past. Mystique is now regrettably thrust the label of "hero for all mutants", Xavier's school is starting to really look like how it does when we first see it in X-Men (2000), the remaining X-Men First Class mutants are teaching at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, and Magneto... well let's just say he's in a good place right now.
In fact, I really loved looking at what Magneto's been up to and how living in a world where mutants are finally starting to be accepted can change him so much. What I've always loved about the X-Men series is that while Magneto is almost always the main antagonist, he's not the villain. Homo sapiens are the biggest threat to mutants, and both Magneto and his good old friend Xavier agree that humans need to be changed, but Magneto's approach is way too destructive. So how does a character like that change when the world starts to accept mutants? It's pretty interesting to look at. However, as we've seen in the trailers and the posters, he's still an antagonist in this film, so you can pretty much scrap that idea, but the scenes they showed on Magneto's current life were just fantastic. Of course, some stuff was a bit too convenient/unrealistic, and they could have done it a bit better.
So that was our previous cast, let's go back to our new characters. I really liked how they introduced Nightcrawler, he's always been a favourite of mine ever since that super cool opening scene in X2. Kodi Smit-McPhee did a great job at portraying him. I also liked how Angel looked a lot cooler than he was portrayed in X-Men: The Last Stand (2006). Honestly, the Angel in that movie was just so... weird.
Jean and Cyclops were great too, and that scene where Xavier is having a look at Cyclops' uncontrolled power was really hilarious.
Psylocke, on the other hand, was a huge let down. You pretty much have seen every cool thing she does in the trailers alone. She doesn't have many lines at all, and when it comes to her time to shine in the action sequences, she hardly does anything. For goodness sake, Angel did more than she did.
So for the most part, the characters were done pretty well for a film that had a lot of ground to cover and a lot of mutants to introduce to us.
My major concern with the film, though, was mainly the ending, and a lot of this had to do with (as I said above) not really understanding Apocalypse's goals. But another thing was that his powers just seemed way too ridiculous. The film was really fantastical, something which we've never seen in an X-Men film before. In fact, I felt like we needed to call in The Avengers or something, because this was the first time we've seen a worldwide catastrophe in X-Men. It truly took up the label of superheroes and supervillains. And yet, for some reason I just didn't really buy the gravity of this situation. Days of Future Past made me feel tension just with someone pointing a gun at someone else, but here, the entire world is falling to pieces and I'm still not really sure I care all that much.
So that's all I'll say about the film without spoiling it, and if you've seen the film already, then click below:
So all in all, this film only has a few downsides, but they're quite major ones. The evidently poorer quality of the script and the lack of fleshing out Apocalypse's character made the film suffer, but apart from that, the action sequences are cool, the acting is great, and it's still really enjoyable.
A few side notes:
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