[rating=4.00]
X-Men: Apocalypse marks a return to form for the X-Men franchise. Consider: this is a franchise that got so off the rails in the mid-aughts that a continuity reboot was necessary. This in universe wipe of established history, achieved through the wonders of time travel, effectively erased the storyline of the first three X-Men movies and laid the groundwork for the tremendously successful—and amazing—first two installments of the latest trilogy, First Class and Days of Future Past. Those two entries into the ongoing saga of Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy, in a role established by Patrick Stewart) provided a bright ray of hope that X-Men would be saved from the abyss it had fallen into after the first three movies. As it currently stands, however, that bright spot was not the new norm, it was an aberration.
The form that it has returned to, then, is bad. The X-Men movies, specifically first three, have always been more about style than substance. Plots were haphazardly thrown together with characters that were ill-formed, unplanned, and flat. People stood around looking cool and doing mildly badass things without ever really achieving much aside from reaching a conclusion that was forgone before the movie even started. And so it is with Apocalypse, a movie that replaces the heartfelt intensity of its two immediate predecessors with all of the sound, fury, and nothing of its turn of the century forebears.
The film introduces a brand new antagonist in the form of Oscar Isaac’s En Sabah Nur, a.k.a. Apocalypse, the world’s first mutant who’s lived thousands of years thanks to his ability to transfer his consciousness into other beings. After being seemingly defeated in Ancient Egyptian times and buried beneath the rubble of a massive pyramid, the mutant is accidentally awoken in the 1980’s, whereupon he continues his mission of total world domination by recruiting his four horsemen (get it?!) in the form of a young Storm (Alexandra Shipp, in a role established by Halle Barry), Angel (Ben Hardy, in a role originated by…oh, screw it, no one cares anymore), fan-favorite Psylocke (Olivia Munn), and your old friend Magneto (Michael Fassbender). This puts him at odds with Professor Xavier’s philosophy and teachings, leading to a showdown between Apocalypse and his four horsemen and the new X-Men team.
Punches are thrown, buildings are collapsed, the world is imperiled. Basically anything you might expect to happen can, and does, happen in Apocalypse. The formulaic script by series producer Simon Kinberg does little to deepen the mythos in any meaningful way, choosing instead to spin its wheels at the starting line without ever taking off. The result kind of looks cool, I guess, in the way that watching a racecar spin its wheels and produce clouds of noxious smoke looks cool, but the film never goes anywhere over the course of its two and a half hour run time.
Instead we have what amounts to largely a retread of previous character introductions. Being that this is the culmination of both a reboot and a prequel it makes sense that we would see younger versions of the heroes established in the original trilogy of films, but there’s a considerable lack of anything remarkable about the way it’s handled. The characters play victim to the plot rather than advancing it, and mostly we see a bunch of hapless teenagers mope around without any sense of narrative importance. Even the normally wonderful Jennifer Lawrence walks around with the same dead-eyed expression of a customer service call center employee trying desperately to remember that the paycheck she receives makes the hell of her job somewhat more bearable.
The potential of its amazing cast of both actors and characters is squandered thanks to its overstuffed, meandering script that never seems to know quite how to handle a narrative as large as Apocalypse suggests. At no point is this more apparent than in the characters of Storm and Psylocke. While the advertising leans heavily on their appearances, their roles amount to little more than, well, appearances. Combined, the two fan-favorite characters hold about ten total minutes of screen time, most of which is spent standing around trying to look badass without actually every doing anything substantial. In that way, they serve as an apt metaphor for the film as a whole.
X-Men: Apocalypse is a brightly colored spectacle that looks kind of badass, and that’s about it. You can tell they wanted to toy with larger themes regarding humanity and existence, but they never quite break through that barrier. It almost seems as though the film expects that their audience is capable neither of understanding nor appreciating nuance and talks down to them, flying in the face of audience reactions to the film’s immediate predecessors. Why studios outside of Marvel (who doesn’t own the rights to this franchise) have a hard time accepting that comic books and superheroes serve as excellent jumping off points to explore complex thematic elements is beyond me, and yet here we are.
Not since X-Men 3: The Last Stand has the franchise plodded so confidently and brazenly into the quagmire of mediocrity. The sheer depth of Apocalypse’s mediocrity is almost amazing in itself. The film plays out almost as a how to guide for giving a project the least amount of effort in the most necessary places. Spectacle is meaningless without a script to support it, and therein lies the difference between Marvel’s MCU and the rest of the comic book movie fold. Narrative and story are the heart of movies, and a movie that shortchanges these elements can never be anything more than a waste of time.
And that’s exactly what X-Men Apocalypse is. A waste. Of time. Of effort. Of money. Of potential. Of a perfectly decent franchise. Under a new guiding hand, with a new director and new producer, it’s possible for someone to take the characters established here and bring the series back to resembling something of merit. I’m not holding my breath, however. No, it seems that X-Men is cursed to wallow in shallow waters, and I doubt anyone exists who can make this a series worth a damn. And that’s honestly too damn bad.
X-Men: Apocalypse opens everywhere on May 27.
25 Responses
What’s with the weird call center analogy?
I work in a call center and don’t consider it even remotely hellish.
Talk about an oddball thing to insert into a review.
I get the feeling the author has issues about past/present job occupations.
You understand this is a war movie at it’s core right? Not every action movie needs to keep an entangled, complex message in it.
Are you saying war movies aren’t substantive? Really, if you look back at the best war movies, they’re all pretty heavy on messaging and thematic depth.
Besides, my issue is more that the movie is boring. It doesn’t have much heart and mostly just exists. I will say it’s better than Last Stand, but only just.
This IS the problem with superhero (and other) movies: SPECTACLE is not a movie. I just watched Age of Ultron and found myself looking at the clock a few times to see how much longer it went. I enjoyed most of the movie, but at some point it becomes white noise.
Many of these movies forget that many in the audience want substance. Give me a reason to root for someone besides – “oh, they look cool, and I like them from ___ comic.”
Movies are going downhill. I can only watch our planet (or New York) get blown up so many times people! Now, get off my lawn.
I had the same issue with Ultron. It was fun enough but it just never grabbed me in any meaningful way and I got bored by the end.
James,
I don’t believe DC or Disney is paying you to write this. But I will say it is disappointing that with all the teases from Singer we got, this movie isn’t better. I’ll still go see it, but my expectations have now been lowered.
Same for the Batman v. Superman movie, but that one I’m actually going to wait for the heavily edited version that will come to TNT or TBS. Maybe with the TV editing it will be better.
I think the major issue here with Apocalypse, Ultron, Batman v. Superman is that they forgot about those compelling animated stories that made these characters legends. Ultron can’t die for one. And Apocalypse is scheming and in the shadows constantly. Look at the X-Men Legends video game (which they don’t make these games like they used to). Apocalypse is just out of reach, but is constantly scheming for a larger purpose of Darwinian domination (only the strong survive). In the 90’s cartoon, while X-Men are fighting Magneto, Apocalypse is gathering information to take down the world through Mystique and Mister Sinister. The 4 horsemen are important but to limit converting them to 10 minutes is tragic. They literally had 30 minutes for each with 90 of Angel in the 90’s animated cartoon. The brainwashing is so horrible that it haunts Archangel.
Villains like Apocalypse and Ultron need to be treated like a Sauron, a villain so clever and big that you cannot just defeat them in a 2 or 2.5 hour movie, but you could wound them and continue the quest for that meaningful message. In the end, there is a war, but what destroys villains like this isn’t the army. That is just a distraction. In the end, their destruction is a consequence of their actions or choices. It isn’t enough to have our heroes continue to defeat big bad guys in 2 hours. Some big bad guys need more build up.
There are writers, producers, and directors that can handle characters like this. Disney may see the benefit with Thanos, but messed up with Ultron (which they’ve likely learned now). Fox and WB now need to figure it out. Disney did get Star Wars so there is a possibility they’ve learned that to have a truly amazing hero team, they must also be a truly evil villian built up as well.
I kind of have to wonder if the problem wasn’t that they edited it so much in the first place. I would love the chance to see Joss Whedon’s 3.5 hour cut of Ultron; that movie was so stuffed that the 2.5 hour runtime just wasn’t big enough to contain it, and everythint felt truncated. Same with Batman v Superman, only in that case it seems that in their rush to fit an arbitrary runtime they cut out some necessary exposition that would’ve made the movie more cohesive. I don’t think either would be perfect in their longer form and, you’re right, they probably would still feel like cheapened versions of the characters, but maybe less so?
You’re dead on about Apocalypse though. They should’ve made him the focus of a trilogy like Disney/MCU did with Thanos. Apocalypse is a villain to build up to, not to throw at us all at once.
This review is brought to you by Disney.
You know, I wasn’t going to respond to this but I’m gonna. Not for your sake, but for anyone else reading. There’s a huge misconception about how screenings work and the press interaction with them, and I’m gonna clear that up. Not that I expect it’ll do much good.
Movie critics rarely, if ever, have any interactions with the studios. There are various layers of protection built into the review system that insulates everyone from the type of collusion disappointed fanboys like to accuse. Studios hire PR firms on a national level, who in turn farm out the responsibilities of setting up screenings and contacting press within their respective markets. The only people critics ever interact with, when it comes to obtaining access to early screenings, are these relatively low level market specific PR firm reps who usually answer to someone else, who usually answers to someone else, who usually answers to the studio. We don’t even so much as get a complimentary bag of popcorn and soda. If we want that, we have to pay for it ourselves. Hell, most publications won’t even spring for that expense for their writers.
99.99999% of critics have ZERO recognition from anyone in the studios, even smaller studios. The truth is that studios don’t particularly care about critics, especially in regards to what critics think about movies that aren’t their own. It’s just not that high of a priority for them. If reviews are good then great! If not, whatever they’re still probably going to break even.
There’s a reason the MCU/Disney consistently earns the most money at the box office, and it ain’t because they’re buying reviews. It’s because they cracked the code and know how to put out good movie after good movie. Sorry no one else has. As a comic fan, that upsets me too. I wanted Apocalypse to be great. I went in excited. It wasn’t though. And now we all have to live with the subpar results.
Thanks for reading.
James, I just wanted you to know that there is someone out there who believes you. 🙂
In that way, they serve as an apt metaphor for the film as a while. <- don't you mean "whole"?
Thanks! Will fix!
At least the movie gets one thing right- Apocalypse chokes the sh_t out of Jennifer Lawrence.
It helps, when writing about movies dealing with superheroes and supervillains, to have actually READ the comics from whence these movies have sprung. These movies ARE those things condensed into 2 hours, which is what the real fans want.
Writing and criticizing about other people’s music, movies, television, and pop culture, when one has never produced anything of worth themselves … is a job? For people with absolutely no talent for anything else, it seems.
Are you trying to tell me that Last Stand did justice to the Phoenix saga? Because this movie does justice to apocalypse in the same way that Last Stand does justice to Phoenix, which is to say not at all.
Amen James, I loved a lot of the comic story arcs because they had great stories and X-Men has always been one of the best at telling stories that meant something more than just “People with super powers being cool”. They started the whole mutant registration thing that Avengers are using so well right now.
Of course it doesn’t always translate well to the big screen but then those ones should get bad reviews like “Last stand” and movies like the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy should get good ones for having a really solid story.
At least Avengers seems to be getting this. I’m still going to watch Apocalypse but your review lowers my expectations a bit.
U WERE DEF PAID TO WRITE A SHITTY ARTICLE ON THE MOVIE… MY GUESS: DC
I think its a valid review, im a huge comic book fan and reader and from just looking at the trailers i can tell its gonna be bad. that final shot of prof x bald is sooo dumb. comic book movies can be terrible sometimes
So, what you’re saying is that you have “absolutely no talent” as a movie critic? If you think that anything that has been shown about the Apocalypse movie looks remotely like the stuff from the comics, you must not have read them. I happen to have read them (and still own them). I for one am not impressed with anything I’ve seen about this movie (except, perhaps, the look of Psyloche).
I also feel Civil War has committed the same crime, the film presents themes of security vs. freedom but never fleshes them out, and we move to the next scene where someone is fighting when it could all be laid to rest with a simple conversation. Likewise with Batman v Superman, another movie with themes never fleshed out and a fight that is poorly set up that could be avoided if our heroes just talked. The bar was set with Nolan’s The Dark Knight and no one has yet to raise it any further.
It’s a superhero movie. If they sat down and talked it out, there would be no movie/story. Civil War was amazing in my opinion. It had a lot of action, it had good substance, and a lot of emotion which I think is important in these films. The Chris Nolan Batman movies were good, but definitely not as good as people make them out to be.
I obviously haven’t seen the movie but I am 100% sure your review is spot on. The trailers look like complete CGI trash. Bryan Singer is an awful director. He’s ruined how many super hero movies now? And yet these studios continually hand over the director chair to this guy?
All these Hollywood companies care about is spectacle, CGI and ticket sales. They don’t give a rat’s ass if the movie is actually any good or not as long as it sells tickets at the box office in gobs. Which most of these movies succeed at doing simply based on their characters and universes being loved by fans and people in general.
Even the “better” super hero movies are still complete CGI ham fisted trash. I haven’t watched a super hero movie since Dark Knight Rises and even for a good Batman trilogy that movie was awful too. I am a HUGE super hero and comic book fan having grown up with all of this stuff through the 80s and these movies don’t even begin to do the material justice in a meaningful way.
These movies don’t even stay true to the comics, the characters or the material and then they are nothing but flat acted CGI spectacles for 2+ hours. Seriously, so bad. I have not and will not waste my time with such CGI trash until Hollywood re-learns how to write actual p[lots and character development with real meaning and emotion. Action movies and especially super hero/comic based movies are victims of this CGI era the most.
What started out as amazing special effects in movies back in the 80s and 90s has turned into a ridiculous movie killing plague. I cannot stand CGI in movies anymore. These movies come out and they are literally 80% or more CGI. Whole characters, entire scenes. Everything is done in front of a green screen or in mocap green screen suits and then CGI’d to hell later. Hell they hardly even use blood packs or any kind of real makeup or props in these movies anymore.
I do not understand why people are willing to shell out large amounts of cash to watch fake CGI effects and absolutely nothing else for 2+ hours. You couldn’t pay me to watch this trash that has become mainstream Hollywood movies these days.
This review says almost nothing. Here is what I read. “I didn’t like the movie because people are standing around and my two favorite characters are barley in it. That not only isn’t a reason to write a bad review, it’s hardly a review. Most of this talks about other movies. It’s just kinda flat out bizarre. I know this thing is probably bad…..only so far I haven’t heard a reason.
I guess I have a totally different expectations when I go to the movies. I just go to be entertained. Looking for deeper meanings is too much work. If I can make it through the movie without falling asleep, or daydreaming, then, it grabbed my attention, kept me entertained. Is that not what movies are supposed to do?
I completely agree with this review. Enthralled by the first two films as a young teenager, I was reignited with hope for the movie franchise after ‘First Class’ bandaged the wound made by ‘Last Stand’. I had nothing but high hopes after the prior two entries, but I’m sad to say the momentum came to a grinding halt after apocalypse. The movie was largely empty of weight– no longer were people multifaceted individuals with their own reasons for a fight, no longer did I find myself caring for anyone in particular (save for Magneto in a forest scene…). This should have been a remarkable achievement like the last two films. Unfortunately we’re left with a shiny, yet empty, experience.