Plot: En Sabah Nur a.k.a. Apocalypse, is a powerful being believed to be the first mutant on Earth. He ruled ancient Egypt until a rebellion resulted in him getting buried alive. But the CIA agent Moira MacTaggert accidentally woke him up in the year 1983 and thus plans to destroy the modern world and remake it in his image with the help of his new four "horsemen", Storm, Psylocke, Angel and Magneto. Thus it's up to Professor X and his students to find a way to stop him.
As far as X-Men films go this one is...serviceable. It's not great like X-Men 2 or Days of Future Past, but it definitely has some good moments that definitely makes it plenty satisfying compared to X-Men: The Last Stand or Wolverine Origins.
Even if you don't like the movie as a whole, it does have some scenes that just about any X-Men fan will enjoy. The first scene showing the origin of Apocalypse and how he got trapped is freaking awesome. The costumes were cool, the scenery was great and the music - while maybe a little too fast paced for what was happening, was nothing short of epic. It got me so excited that I'm a little tempted to try to find it on iTunes to be frank. There's also another scene where Quicksilver is saving the day with everything else is in slow mo and it's even funnier and when he did it in Days of Future Past. But by far the best moments in the film are the ones with Magneto. Just with the first few scenes with his family, you quickly care for what's happening and the last scene where you see the three of them together is a big right-in-the-feels moment in the movie.
The characters were decent for the most part. Even though you'll probably care for Magneto than anyone else (as that seems how everyone else online is acting) the other characters still keep you invested in what's happening in the story. You have the slowly growing relationship between Gene Simmons and Scott Summers, you have Nightcrawler joining the group, heck, we even have more development of Gene and the professor's relationship than I think we ever did in the earlier films. But I don't know all of the films by heart, so that's just me. Now with Apocalypse I want you to keep in mind that I only know him so much from what I remember from watching the 90's animated series a couple years back before I went to see The Wolverine in theaters. So I would like any big X-Men fan out there reading this review to please take that with a pinch of salt. Anyway, for the most part Apocalypse was good.... not great but good ish. I guess my feeling is that he did what he was menacing and all, but the same time I can kind of see what the critics on Rotten Tomatoes were talking about when they say he was a very clichéd villain. He didn't have too much of a back story apart from the first scene there wasn't that much complexity to him. Maybe there is more in the comics, maybe there isn't. I don't know, again, take my knowledge of Apocalypse with a pinch of salt. Oscar Isaac did a good job making him menacing (man I can't believe that's Poe from The Force Awakens), and his costume was cool. But then I watched Jeremy Jahns' review for the movie and he made a good point that Apocalypse is the smallest person in his group of himself and his "horsemen". In the show, he's pretty much a giant, but here he's shorter than his henchmen and I can see where some fans would be a little displeased about that.
To me however, the film's only real crime is that it kind of drags. Now on the one hand you can understand why given that there's multiple stories that the movie is trying to tell and it's something you can't avoid given that X-Men is a franchise where there's multiple characters for you to focus on. But with that said, it does feel like some story lines get more focus than others. Sometimes, I would almost forget about one or two of them until they brought up again because they want to focus more on what's happening with things like Jean and Scott's relationship or the professors relationship with Moria and things like that. There's also the story line with Quicksilver that had a poor resolution. He eventually reveals that Quicksilver is Magneto's son and you would think that would lead to something really big at the climax and they almost did but without giving anything away, what they do with it is a let down.
And that's my review for X-Men: Apocalypse. If you're looking for something even bigger and grander than X-Men 2 or Days of Future Past, this movie shows that they're still not there yet. But even with that said, the film does have some entertaining scenes and performances that I'd like to think any X-Men fan would enjoy. Not terrific, but a decent enough time and at least is not X-Men: The Last Stand or Wolverine Origins.
Rating: 65%
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