X-Men: Apocalypse |
  • USA • 2016 • 144m •   • Directed by: Bryan Singer. • Starring: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Oscar Isaac, Rose Byrne, Evan Peters, Josh Helman, Sophie Turner, Tye Sheridan, Lucas Till, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Ben Hardy. • Music by: John Ottman.      Since the dawn of civilization, he was worshiped as a god. Apocalypse, the first and most powerful mutant from Marvel's X-Men universe, amassed the powers of many other mutants, becoming immortal and invincible. Upon awakening after thousands of years, he is disillusioned with the world as he finds it and recruits a team of powerful mutants, including a disheartened Magneto, to cleanse mankind and create a new world order, over which he will reign. As the fate of the Earth hangs in the balance, Raven with the help of Professor X must lead a team of young X-Men to stop their greatest nemesis and save mankind from complete destruction.
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Apocalypse gives the perfect amount of story arc and character development that you've come to expect from the prequel franchise, as well as giving a perfectly balanced dosage of mind blowing and astonishing action and excitement, that is actually sometimes "beautiful" to watch.
Finally, a Marvel villain done right! Whilst his reign of terror may feel a bit short-winded, in that he rises to power, does some stuff and then BOOM the X-Men finish him off, Apocalypse does manage to create himself as what I felt was a genuine threat to the protagonists and thus, you feel engaged throughout the development of the character and equally fascinated to see both his rise and fall.
The casting of the young X-Men was in a word, solid. Most notably Sophie Turner as Jean Grey, who essentially outshines the other new students of Xavier's school. Jean probably goes through the greatest development of all the new characters and endeavours into one of the most central journeys of the X-Men franchise, in that you should allow yourself to be accepting of who you are and be true to yourself. The movie shines a light on this well, so that by the end of the film, Turner brilliantly executes everything you want to see in Jean Grey, primarily her awakening to her total badassery and courage and in the final showdown of the film, her collaboration with Xavier in defeating Apocalypse brings it all to life in the greatest pay off for the both the characters and the movie itself. Arguably this has made young Jean to be more compelling and strangely, a more developed character than older Jean from the original trilogy.
I wouldn't be doing this movie justice without reviewing Quicksilver doing his thing. Arguably, Quicksilver's running scene in Apocalypse felt much more ambitious than the one in the previous movie, just because of how central it was to the story and that the makers of the movie are finally acknowledging of the fact that if he stuck around for the second half of Days Of Future Past, he would've been just a simple deus ex machina and solved all their problems too quickly. With his scene this time around, where Xavier's school is blowing up and he has to save everyone inside, it is genuinely as astonishing as it was originally in DOFP! Fantastically filmed, intense, and all round just well done. Whilst I will admit it is hard to determine whether his scene from DOFP is better than this one, just from a film making point of view, considering the one in DOFP seems to me like it was made from a much more practical stand point, it doesn't make the scene in Apocalypse any less credible. But forgive my ignorance, if I'm just totally wrong considering I don't know anything about the production of this scene.
Wolverine's cameo is a prime example of how to create hype and anticipation, whilst not striding away from the movie you're currently trying to produce, it works perfectly. Simple yet effective. The way Wolverine leaves the movie is a fantastic way to have the audience asking questions and then is even more so topped off with the post credit scene. It might finally be a good stand alone Wolverine movie.
Now there are indeed problems with the movie which I will now touch upon, briefly. Mystique is only as central to the X-Men prequels as she is, literally because she is played by Jennifer Lawrence. I have absolutely no problems with her as an actress or on a person level, love me a bit of J Law. But her Hollywood status as one of the biggest actresses in the world is getting in the way of time that could be spent showing or developing characters that need it. She keeps going on the same journey of wanting to be accepted in society, whilst the new characters are just showing it better. Her on screen struggle should be over by now and they're just trying to find new ways to keep it going, it should of been wrapped up in DOFP and been done with, though Lawrence always does a terrific job with what she's given, but it's just a bit of an inconvenience for the franchise now. Secondly, Magneto. Again, Fassbender, absolutely terrific and all that, the character's story of living in Poland and his family and all, is very interesting. However, I feel like Magneto is very much just used as a character that swaps between being "good" and "bad" whenever the story demands him to do so and it's irritating. I get that Apocalypse caught him at a bad moment in his life and that's why Magneto joins him, but if the same situation happened to Xavier and he was called upon by Apocalypse, would he have gone with him? No. Because he isn't considered a villain in the franchise, but Magneto is. As much as it is cool to see Magneto joining the X-Men to defeat Apocalypse at the end of the film, it's showing him to be vulnerable to anything and anyone and it doesn't make sense considering his character. Also, you know from older Magneto, he's just gonna turn back to being bad in the future anyway, so why should we feel anything towards this "heroic" and "character altering" moment?
Overall, fantastic and in the days of modern cinema in which audiences except so much of all big franchise films, this one definitely delivers with an ideal runtime that feels nowhere near like what it actually is and a really satisfying execution that actually pretty much surpasses expectations.
Review by laurentzyoutube from the Internet Movie Database.
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