X-Men: Apocalypse


Following the critically acclaimed global smash hit X-Men: Days of Future Past, director Bryan Singer returns with X-Men: Apocalypse. Since the dawn of civilization, he was worshipped as a god. Apocalypse, the first and most powerful mutant from Marvel’s X-Men universe, amassed the powers of many other mutants, becoming immortal and invincible. Upon awakening after thousands of years, he is disillusioned with the world as he finds it and recruits a team of powerful mutants, including a disheartened Magneto (Michael Fassbender), to cleanse mankind and create a new world order, over which he will reign. As the fate of the Earth hangs in the balance, Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) with the help of Professor X (James McAvoy) must lead a team of young X-Men to stop their greatest nemesis and save mankind from complete destruction.

I will say first that I liked this movie more than I thought I would.  I had pretty low expectations based on the trailers because it looked like they were making the same mistakes with the first X-Men trilogy.  Too many mutants.  Making Magneto a secondary villain.  And marketing wise - showing Jennifer Lawrence in human form much more than the blue Mystique form was annoying the hell out of me.  And all three of those things definitely did bother me about the movie, but compared to Last Stand (aka X-Men 3), this movie at least had a story instead of rambling along and just throwing some mutants on the screen.  In fact, it might have had too much story.  This movie was 2 1/2 hours long plus all the previews.  And you felt it.  The story of Apocalypse had to be developed/explained.  Then they had to get you up to date on where the mutants we are familiar with were.  Then they had to introduce you to the new ones.  At one point - the bad guys were just chilling on a mountain top for a good half hour of the movie so the story could play out . . . . . and then you got the crazy and chaotic conclusion with all the mutants fighting.  

I would still recommend this movie to people even though it sounds like I had mostly negative things to say.  It wasn't nearly as smart or good as First Class or Days Of Future Past, but it was still a good watch and brought some good mutants into the fray for moving forward with the franchise.