Spoiler Warning, if that sort of thing upsets you.
I absolutely love the X-Men, they were the first group of characters that I really followed in the comics. I loved the idea of them being outcasts and being hated by the people that they protect. These are ideas that resonate within all of us at some point in our lives, which is why the X-Men remain so popular. Their film history has ranged from phenomenal to 2 of my least favorite comic book films of all time(X-Men : The Last Stand and X-Men Origins : Wolverine) This film falls somewhere in the middle because on the good side you have powerful performances by Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy. The primary problem being that this might be their last X-Men Film which leads to the bad side and that is the fact that they don’t have much of a series without those three. Apocalypse as a character is terribly written and he looks laughably bad by 2016 standards. I feel bad for SImon Kinberg(The Writer) in the sense that he probably had the beginnings of the script written when he saw Age Of Ultron last year, took it to Bryan Singer(The Director) and they kept trying to come up with ways that Apocalypse wouldn’t end up being a discount Ultron but they just couldn’t manage it. His main plan is that, using Magneto’s ability to control the metal in the earth, he’s going to cause tidal waves and anyone who survives will be stronger and he will rule over them. Just let that plan sink in for a bit before you move onto the next paragraph.
Oscar Isaac does the best he can with that script, he delivers these speeches well but they don’t hold any weight because Apocalypse is pretty useless in this movie. His power set is basically Sylar from Heroes when it comes down to it, he transfers his consciousness from body to body and gains their mutant abilities afterwards, I wasn’t a huge fan of that but then three huge thoughts crossed my mind that made me hate that subplot even more
- If he can gain their powers after transferring into them then why does he need Horsemen? Let’s face it Angel, Psylocke and Storm all would’ve taken that deal in this movie because they’re just weak-minded pawns. Magneto would’ve been a bit difficult but you could fight them and force it on him like he tries to do with Xavier.
- If he has control over inorganic matter, which he clearly shows us multiple times, then why does he need Magneto to cause tidal waves?
- If you can sense the power within these mutants then why are you not choosing the girl with the power of the Phoenix Force?
Apocalypse left me with a lot of questions about his intelligence, maybe he should’ve transferred into a mutant whose power was logical cognitive abilities…Eh? Eh? Ah what do you know from funny. But seriously, no one can ever complain about MCU villains ever again because even if they weren’t overtly threatening then you can at least say that they were more interesting than Apocalypse and I never had problems with their logic.
Psylocke, Angel and Storm are just shadows of who they should’ve been but they’re nothing more than Henchmen.(particularly Psylocke.)
I like Nightcrawler, Jean and Cyclops. Cyclops is still annoying, Nightcrawler is pretty spot on and Jean is great except for one key part : Jean Grey just murders Angel. There’s no way around it. I struggle with that because Jean is so typically the one that is trying to sustain human life unless it’s absolutely necessary…like when she kills Apocalypse but Angel was technically just misguided like Storm who is welcomed into the X-Men without anyone mentioning the whole helping destroy the world thing.
Caliban’s kind of in this movie. He can sense mutants but for some reason he can’t sense Apocalypse. I’m just questioning where Kinberg and Singer got their information about these characters especially when Singer had banned comics from the sets of his films. Can we please get Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman back?
Fox needs to come to terms with something terrifying: it’s not 2000 anymore. This film would’ve been considered the pinnacle of Comic book films if we hadn’t seen The Dark Knight trilogy or anything Marvel Studios has put out. To many people 17 years isn’t a long time but in the world of comics and film it is. We need to adapt and write stronger stories and actually build our characters instead of just showing them to us, you can tell me that the girl with the white mohawk was Storm all day long but I can assure you that it wasn’t. We have advanced beyond the world of just seeing things and have progressed into wanting to know more about who these characters are and until Fox realizes that then they’ll only make a profit based off of people being hopeful that when they go they’ll see a better X-Men film.
Overall, the film is worth the price of admission for Fassbender’s performance as Magneto. There’s a few things that they get right that are so good but there’s a lot of bad in this movie.
