Movie Review: X-Men Apocalypse
Rating: 1 and 1/2 Stars
Maybe I’ve grown fatigued from overexposure to superhero blockbusters.
After finishing up X-Men Apocalypse, I had to reason with myself. Functional story, developed characters, lackluster script. meaningless villain.. oh…
This is Marvel’s classic struggle with finding compelling villains for their vastly more intricate heroes. Apocalypse suffers from the same treatment Ultron got in the Avengers.
Despite all the end of the world rhetoric and Day After Tomorrow world destruction, villains like Ultron and Apocalypse never really feel that threatening.
For being an invincible immortal mutant god, Apocalypse encounters a disorganized X-Men once and loses pretty miserably. I don’t think Jennifer Lawrence once broke a sweat.
So what was the newest X-Men really about? Mostly the relationship between Erik (Magneto) and Professor Charles Xavier. It’s pretty simple. Magneto has a disgraced past and is filled with rage upon the death of his family which occurs in an early tense scene. Xavier of course believes in Erik’s good will and we know he’ll come through eventually.
Pause. I can’t let this Apocalypse thing go. In the opening scene of the film, Apocalypse is shown being betrayed in his previous life. He’s written like an idiot unable to learn from his own mistakes. Alright, I’m good.
I really have no will or motivation to go through this plot. I didn’t do my research, but I assume there’s a lot of callbacks to the previous X-Men title: Days of the Past Regarding Yesterdays Future.
It’s not that X-Men Apocalypse is unwatchable. There are a couple intriguing character arcs that held my attention for a majority of the film, but they never really go anywhere outside of the Magneto flip flop. The Magneto flip flop wasn’t really a momentous occasion.
The second biggest whiff (the Apocalypse character being the first), is the lack of utilization of the X-Men’s powers. There’s a lot of mutant characters with a lot of different powers, but there were only one distinct moment where the usage of a power was creatively exploited in the film.
We are introduced to the geeky Quicksilver, who saves all the mutant inhabitants inside an exploding building in slow motion set to the song Sweet Dreams. It’s a fantastic scene. I would urge you to watch that scene on YouTube and forget about the rest of the movie altogether.
