"X-Men: Apocalypse" Review

WARNING: This post may contain spoilers... unless you've seen an X-Men movie before.

Bryan Singer returns to bring us the third film in the X-Men: First Class trilogy; a film which, in title alone, promises to be the biggest X-Movie yet. And with the promise of so many fresh faces, surely X-Men: Apocalypse would be something special, right?

Right???

Wrong.

X-Men: Apocalypse is the biggest cinematic letdown of the year so far. It isn't entirely devoid of all merit, but the shocking lack of both action and stakes, as well as an empty blowhard of a villain, make this a middle-of-the-road superhero movie and easily the most underwhelming X-Men film since X-Men Origins: Wolverine. 

Seeming to backtrack once again from the ending of Days of Future Past, X-Men: Apocalypse takes place in the mid-1980s, so one can't help but wonder why Patrick Stewart never went back to warn James McAvoy that they'd eventually be pitted against an Egyptian god capable of decimating the entire world with little effort. The story here is that the world's first mutant, En Sabah Nur a.k.a. "Apocalypse" (Oscar Isaac), awakens after being preserved underground for 5,000 years. Back then, the Egyptians worshiped him because of his abilities. In the '80s, he comes to find that too much has changed, including the fact that nobody worships him anymore. To him, the only logical thing to do is cleanse the earth of mankind and "build a better world" where everyone will kneel to the might of En Sabah Nur and his "four horsemen." Since Pestilence, War, Famine and Death are no longer by his side, he recruits powerful mutants like Storm (Alexandra Shipp), Angel (Ben Hardy), Psylocke (Olivia Munn) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender). From here, Apocalypse can be seen preening for the rest of the movie. On the other side of the coin, the X-Men have some bushy-tailed recruits of their own, including Cyclops (Tye Sheridan), Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee), Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) and Quicksilver (Evan Peters). They join mainstays Professor X (McAvoy), Beast (Nicholas Hoult) and Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) in an effort to prevent yet another extinction-level event.

This is pretty standard superhero formula, and the script by Simon Kinberg (responsible for two different ends of the X-spectrum, including X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men: Days of Future Past) does precious little to deviate from that. That said, Magneto gets a bit of a fresh facelift as we pick up with him trying to live a normal, peaceful life in Poland. He has a wife, daughter, and steady job as a metalworker of all things. Fassbender gives another committed performance and has one of the best scenes in the entire franchise when Erik faces the consequences of revealing his powers during a workplace accident that would've killed a man without his help.

For the most part, however, nobody else in the cast is given strong material to work with. The performances aren't awful; there's just nothing here to make anybody in particular stand out. This is an ensemble packed with loads of exciting talent, and it will be awesome to see future installments with this cast. But there was nothing here that made me go "Man, I LOVED ______ ! I can't wait to see more of him/her in the next one!" Sure, Quicksilver gets a couple more great time-freezing sequences but nothing that lives up to the one in the Pentagon kitchen in DoFP. I will say that it would be ill-advised NOT to use Munn's Psylocke in a Deadpool sequel since she's basically Wade Wilson's female counterpart. She hardly gets to do anything in this movie anyway, so using her elsewhere might bring the fulfillment that fans (and the character) deserve. Perhaps more devastating than the actual apocalypse itself is the fact that Oscar Isaac's talents are essentially reduced to rubble along with everything else. En Sabah Nur, a guy who's supposed to single-handedly wipe everything out, ultimately does nothing with it. He destroys Cairo, and part of New York City, and sends the world's nuclear payloads to outer space, but in the grand scheme of things, he accomplishes literally nothing aside from getting a few mutants to listen to his incessant monologuing about how the world will soon fall and rise again in his image. Isaac could've made him an intriguing character, but it seems Kinberg failed to write him that way. We get no sense of stakes with his "evil" plan, and there's barely a shred of evolution for any of the characters. For the ones that do really change like Magneto, who actually makes an effort at a normal life, it feels like we've seen it all before. Characters like Magneto, Mystique and Professor X have shown shreds of various characteristics, both good and bad, in these movies for years now. So when Mystique takes on a role as a leader of the X-Men, Magneto flip-flops from good to bad to good yet again, and Storm moves to the good guys' side, it doesn't really feel like anything new.

The last major disappointment here is that the film suffers from Star Wars prequel syndrome - too much talking, not enough "doing." If Singer, Kinberg, and apparently Apocalypse himself had their way, humanity would end simply by talking everyone to death. There is one cool action scene mid-way through that doubles as an exciting cameo, and then there's the climactic fight scene which lasts maybe 10 minutes. That's it. Something isn't right if the X-Men are supposed to be facing their single biggest villain yet, and it all blows over like a dusty fart.

X-Men: Apocalypse earns a couple points for at least doing something interesting with Magneto and for Michael Fassbender acting the shit out of it. There are a handful of fun character moments, but that doesn't make up for a rote villain and a story with no sense of stakes or purpose. You should know already if you're going to see this movie or not, but my recommendation falls at the lower end of "average."

C-