This movie was hyped just as much, if not more, than Captain America: Civil War. But this time Marvel Studios wasn’t at the helm, but they did have Bryan Singer which may have helped save the movie. Remember, these reviews are spoiler free so read on without worries. Here’s my review.
It was fun and enjoyable. That’s really what I want everyone to understand. I had a good time watching it, though I’m not sure if I’ll ever watch it again. This movie was a one shot. I saw it, it was entertaining, now lets move on to the next big movie. I know. I’ll make a compliment sandwich with this review so let’s start off with something good. The acting… kind of.
Michael Fassbender (Prometheus, Inglourious Basterds) stole the show as far as the acting was concerned. I came really close to shedding a tear in one really intense scene. Magneto has always been one of the best characters in the X-Men universe because of his depth and complexity. The movies only dip a little into Magneto’s story but Fassbender runs with it. I knew what his character was going to end up doing in the end. I knew it from the very beginning. But I still enjoyed watching him do it because Fassbender made it enjoyable. James McAvoy (Wanted, The Last King of Scotland) was good too but the writing didn’t do him any favors. When he got a good scene, however, he killed it. Evan Peters (Kick-Ass, American Horror Story) stole the movie as Quicksilver, but in a different way than Fassbender did. Allow me to explain.
The writing was hit and miss for me, but since we’re doing a compliment sandwich, lets start with the good stuff. Quicksilver was written to be entertaining and lucky for us, Peters’s performed perfectly and yay for tongue twisters. Just like with his scene in Days of Future Past, it could have easily been cheesy and stupid but the visuals mixed with Peters talent saved it and made it one of the best scenes in the movie. The same goes for X-Men: Apocalypse. Even now I wish I could see just that scene again because it made me laugh.
The visuals were mostly impressive with sweeping shots of cities being destroyed (which was in the trailers so no complaining) and awesome looking powers. This is where I’m going get into the meat of the compliment sandwich. There were quite a few scenes that looked like an amateur worked on it. It made me wonder if their budget was blown on some of the better looking parts. One of the scenes was so bad that it pulled me out of the movie. The rest of the bad CG was just small things here and there so it didn’t really affect my enjoyment anymore but it still nagged at me.
Lets talk about some of the acting that sucked. See that picture above? One of those actors was terrible. You could say it drove me… Stark raving mad. That’s right. Sansa Stark herself was awful. It made me sad because I like her in Game of Thrones but she was still playing Sansa, just in a different setting. We also can’t talk about bad acting without talking about Olivia Munn (Attack of the Show, Parenthood). I like her as a host way better but I have a feeling they picked her just because she already looked the part. And lastly Jennifer Lawrence (Hunger Games). The more acting she does the more I realize she plays one character. Rose Byrne (Neighbors, Insidious) tends to play similar characters, but she changes it up enough to be interesting and enjoyable. J-Law, however, had plenty of scenes but delivered the same performance she always does. I felt bad after writing this paragraph because it seems like I’m picking on the women. Singer picked the wrong women. According to IMDB, Ellie Fanning and Chloe Grace Moretz were both up for the role of Jean Grey. They would have killed it. They’re great actresses who would have… you know… acted.
A couple paragraphs up I talked about the writing being hit and miss. Well, here’s the miss. They were really heavy handed with some of the plot points that were going to come in the end. I saw this movie with four of my friends and they all saw part of the ending telegraphed from pretty early on. Also there was one point that the trailers didn’t even hint at but I picked up on it from the very first scene, but by the middle of the film it was even more obvious. X-Men Apocalypse never surprised me. It was all predictable. The fact that the movie was still fun is one of the things that saved it from being a terrible movie.
Lets wrap this up with more good. This movie almost got me to cry and the turned around and made me give quite a few honest belly laughs. All the bad things I talked about weren’t enough to take the enjoyment away. They squished a huge comic story arc into a two hour and twenty minute movie and it didn’t feel rushed. The writers of Batman V Superman could have learned a lesson from Singer and the others. Apocalypse himself was nerfed in some ways yet made even more over powered than he was in the comics in others. This helped the movie move forward without feeling like we were missing something. The changes that were made were made for a reason and there was nothing rage worthy. My friend Nick is a Marvel superfan and he came out of the movie with the same attitude as me. This was good, not great.
X-Men: Apocalypse gets a 7 out of 11