Review of X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) by Tiberio S — 30 May 2018

By far the biggest, funnest, most colorful and exciting X-Men movie ever made. Bryan Singer clearly wants to outdo himself each time he directs an X-Men movie, and he has totally succeeded. The only problem is it might be too much, because it doesn't work structurally half as well as its predecessor Days of Future Past. But mark my words, this is the quintessential X-Men movie, jampacked with everything a fanboy would dream of. While the film's strength lies in the development of characters like Jean Grey and Cyclops, with their romance as well as Professor X and Moira McTaggert, there is a problem of overdevelopment, the franchise rushing to get to a familiar place too soon. Most notably is Jean Grey embodying the Phoenix, which if you don't get, you won't watching the movie, because it's never explained why she grows from nothing to so powerful that fire spews from her body and she can walk on air.

I also love the character Apocalypse and how well he was played by Oscar Isaac. I applaud the production for using practical makeup effects and avoiding digital characters; it gives him weight, presence, and real power. But I kind of wish he just appeared, because I didn't care for his backstory, which took too much time at the onset of the film - I would've put the whole thing on the cutting room floor and axed it. Another reason to cut the backstory is that you now have the responsibility of assembling the Four Horsemen, which requires an origin story for each character. There simply isn't enough room in this movie to have so many origin stories, including a new, and quite possibly third version of Wolverine. Too many origins simply never worked and the characters, especially Psylocke and Angel, were weaker for having to be assembled. I'd rather Apocalypse show up with the Four Horsemen and get the show started. If half the movie is about him developing a team, why shatter it so quickly? An assembled team allows you the luxury of making this a satisfactory one-off villain. I also found Magneto's new life to be overly melodramatic and unnecessary for an established villain. How many times is Magneto going to go back-and-forth between good guy and bad guy? It's getting annoying, and this movie changes him at least three times, which is inconsistent with his ending from DoFP.

One impressive performance came from a young man whose shoes I would never want to step in, replacing franchise fan favorite Alan Cumming in the role of Nightcrawler. Suffice to say the young man exceeded expectations. But my favorite role goes to Ty Sheridan as Cyclops,- the character's justice has finally been done on screen. All due respect to James Marsden, they had a lot of trouble connecting that character with audiences. But Sheriden is born to be behind those glasses, breathing new and needed life into the major protagonist.

These are tough films to make, lots and lots of characters, and competing with the MCU and Justice League, they are forced to balance screen time with all these superpowered mutants. It's a tough ensemble, and I'm always wondering when it will get to be too much and topple on itself. This had a chance to show that you can do it perfectly, by not overdeveloping. It's crazy to think there could be overdevelopment when logically more cast means the result will be underdevelopment - that's essentially what happens to characters who get so much less screentime than other major characters; development at all seems unnecessary. So that balance wasn't perfectly achieved, but I saw the potential. By all technicality, the first Avengers achieves greater harmony, but they have far fewer characters, and I am a sucker for X-Men, so this is the better movie. Doesn't really matter, they all face world-shattering threats, a scenario that I'm also exhausted with. Can't we ever threaten one character and their livelihood? Just once I want to see a movie where the greatest threat is destroying Professor X, and everyone works as a team to save him for all he's done. Deadpool works on this level more, but it went too far in that extreme by presenting a lame villain. How about a colorful villain who's greatest threat is destroying one man? Silva in Skyfall is a terrorist who destroys many lives, but he's only taking out innocent lives and locations to draw out M from her stronghold, he doesn't need the world. And for anything that spews out of Marvel, the world is not enough (yea I know Bond was in the last sentence), it becomes galaxies and extra dimensions. It's fargone.

This film is entertaining, gripping, and very emotional, but I worry for the future. I hope they can scale back and not lose sight of their core characters and what these stories mean to them more personally. X-Men is teetering, but it's still holding strong. And Magneto could use a rest, he's due. Would hate to lose Fassbender, his performance is never anything but the best, but he seems to have walked out of the picture for now and should be saved for a third act resurgence, some pivotal cameo, at the end of the next chapter.