After the events of Days of Future Past effectively erased all previous X-Men films, director Brian Singer had the opportunity to completely rethink (and improve) the franchise. But as promising as it looks from the trailer, Apocalypse just doesn't deliver.
It doesn't help that for the first half hour or so we are pushed from character to character, jumping between countries every few minutes. It takes a while to get going, and you end up spending a lot of time waiting for the main cast to reunite, or in the case of Jean Grey and Scott Summers, waiting for them to meet for the first time. When the X-Men finally get together they must defeat Apocalypse, an all-powerful mutant, and his four followers.
The cast performances are good as a whole, with Michael Fassbender proving once again that he is well suited to the role of Magneto. The new additions are also very good, including Game of Thrones' Sophie Turner as Jean and Tye Sheridan, who definitely stands out as Cyclops. However, there are so many characters stuffed into the film that none of them really receive enough screen time. Jennifer Lawrence is the exception. We see quite a lot of her, but unfortunately she spends the majority of the film looking like herself rather than Mystique. Her portrayal of the character is unrelentingly grim and bears absolutely no resemblance to the cool, kick-ass villain of the original trilogy. Thankfully Evan Peters' Quicksilver brings some much needed charisma to the proceedings. But it never quite lives up to his performance in Days of Future Past. Even the use of a slow motion scene, which was so praised in the last film, just feels old hat the second time around.
Despite all this Apocalypse is perfectly action packed and decently paced. The special effects are very good and we get to see some very cool superpowers. The downside is that often it becomes a bit too melodramatic and there are a couple of monologues too many. And, most unfortunately of all, the villains just aren't intimidating enough. Whilst we are told throughout the film that Apocalypse is extremely powerful and near impossible to defeat he comes across as just another generic supervillain. His followers are equally unimpressive. Magneto is the only one who is provided with any motivation for joining him. The others, namely Angel and Psylocke, have no motivation, very few lines of dialogue and their only purpose seems to be giving the heroes someone to fight at the end of the film. Whilst it is quite entertaining and contains some good performances, X-Men: Apocalypse is overcrowded with generic and underdeveloped villains and is ultimately a bit of a disappointment.
