Director: Bryan Singer.
Starring: Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Oscar Isaac, Rose Bryne, Evan Peters, Sophie Turner.
Oh my En Sabah Nur! I had little expectation for this final X-Men film, yet it still managed to unfortunately disappoint. Having so much to offer, the film appears to have lost it's way and results in an unbalanced mess of plot holes and poor character development. It's difficult to not compare this to the recent release of Civil War but even if Captain American and Co. didn't come about, this is still a stand alone shame and misuse of some of Marvel's greatest characters.
Jean Grey pretty much sums up the entire movie whilst discussing Star Wars (what is it with Marvel referencing Star Wars films all of a sudden?) Return of The Jedi confirming "the third one is always the worse." (For the record, RotJ is my personal fave of those three) Is this a reference to the actual movie itself? It's lack of emotion and the action was a poor show. Even with major Hungover Jackman's Wolverine making an unsurprising cameo, the fighting is clumsy, lazy, unimaginative and actually quite boring, which doesn't make sense when trying to showcase and reintroduce some X-Men characters.
The CGI is some of the worse I have recently seen and though it's apocalyptic, it's resembles a badly edited version of a Roland Emmerich disaster movie that loses gravity of the situation unfolding. I think the studio spent most of it's budget on Quicksilver's extended time lapse scene maybe trying to recapture the success from 'Days of Future Past' whilst sacrificing the rest of the film's effects. Even the makeup slipped, and though I can appreciate it must be a hard job with characters like Beast and Nightcrawler, I do believe they scripted Raven to always be in disguise so to spare the blue paint for the previously mentioned two.
Oscar Isaacs does a superb super villain but I couldn't help but think he would make a better Sith Lord if he wasn't already Poe. He's an egotistical wannabe God who, after a long sleep wakes up in our modern world, checks all our facebook statuses and catches up on Jeremy Kyle via an old TV, who doesn't appear remotely angered or surprised about our fall from greatness, yet decides the world needs culling. I actually understand where he's coming from.
Sophie Turner does a good Jean Grey but I found Tye Sheridan's Cyclops annoying. Josh Helman returns as promoted Col. Stryker who actually looks more like Seann Williams Scott and James Marsden love child and Nicholas Hoult as Hank the Beast, a casting I'm still not sure of. I'm also undecided about Kodi Smit-McPhee's Nightcrawler and Rose Bryne's MacTaggert's weird return which felt unnecessary and was just another filler to flesh out the movie; you could do away with her whole part; in fact, I reckon you could cut a third of the movie out without it ruining the storyline.
JLaw doesn't actually look like she's bothered in this movie and her character does very little compared to what the trailers suggests, plenty of talking and very little action. (I still love her though.) McAvoy is great as Charles X and Fassbender's Magneto shows some torment but again, he can't seem to make up his mind to who's side he's on. Regardless of his final choice, I don't think it can pardon the largest death toll in all of the Marvel movies. Which, didn't have any emotional impact.
Being very mutant concentrated, us meek humans get very little screen time for a world wide genocide, apart from a couple of silly snippets from around the globe, NYC getting torn up and the US superpowers sitting in their swivel chairs looking clichéd and completely stupid. It just felt empty and non-threatening which is really a major fail for an apocalyptic film.
The four horsemen get over shadowed by Magneto which isn't a surprise and it just shows how flawed the plot is, elaborating on Magneto's recruitment. They just turned Psylocke, Storm and Angel into wimpy sidekicks and what was the point of Caliban, Jubilee and the Blob making an appearance, apart from filling out an already long enough film.
What I did like was the nods to the Marvel and not so Marvel universe like the band Rush and Nightcrawler donning MJ's Thriller jacket. John Ottman's score was good, however the use of Beethoven's symphony No. 7 felt like a cheap copy of it's use in the film Knowing when the world finally comes to a destructive end.
There was part of me that wanted Apocalypse to win and lay waste to everyone and get it over with, only to be defeated in an anti-climatic ending, however, Jean Grey's eventual exhibit as Phoenix is pretty epic if not over dramatic. This was definitely a step back for the X-Men franchise and have lost interest. I still think DC's Doomsday would kick everyone's arse.
Running Time: 4
The Cast: 7
Performance: 6
Direction: 4
Story: 3
Script: 4
Creativity: 3
Soundtrack: 6
Job Description: 4
The Extra Bonus Point: 0
41% 4/10
