“I like finishing things”.
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On top of that, the menagerie of mutants is over-populated for one film: it’s just too crowded and therefore too superficial. Director and co-writer Bryan Singer, who launched X-Men in 2000 has steered this latest installment, X-Men: Apocalypse and delivered another victor.
So we’re introduced to younger versions of established mutants, enrolled in the new class at the School for Gifted Youngsters, including Tye Sheridan as Scott “Cyclops” Summers, Sophie Turner as Jean Gray, and Kodi Smit-McPhee as Nightcrawler. It can also be pretentious, occasionally thrilling and surprisingly tiresome.
X-Men: Apocalypse – starring James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Oscar Isaac, Olivia Munn, and tons more – follows the X-Men uniting to defeat the world’s first mutant, Apocalypse, amid his extinction level plan. But the ingredients never gel, and the concoction Singer pulls out of the oven doesn’t look anything like the movie poster they slapped in his cookbook. Charles (James McAvoy) is busy with his school for the gifted, while Raven/Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) and Erik/Magneto (Michael Fassbender) have gone into hiding.
“Civil War” also had the advantage of ambiguity. This robs “Apocalypse” of any genuine tension and effectively turns it into an elaborate origin story for Professor Xavier’s baldness. After all, poor word of mouth can certainly impact the numbers, but given how Apocalypse did overseas last week, 20th Century Fox probably doesn’t have much to worry about. Is it as good as the last two installments of the series? No.
And yet, for all the mess “Apocalypse” makes, the quality of its cast and characters, combined with the strength of the stories that have come before, will at least make Singer’s new film entertaining as a quick fix.
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X-Men: Apocalypse is finally coming out this weekend, and though the reviews on it have been fairly mixed, it should still do really well at the box office. But he also seems to be the movie’s biggest flaw when it comes to reviews. And while Marvel Studios movies have implemented mid-credits scenes in addition to post-credits scenes, Fox’s X-Franchise still sticks with the one bonus stinger at the very, very end of the credits.
