Review of X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) by Cooperwade — 03 Jun 2016

One of this year’s 437 superhero movies, X-Men: Apocalypse, has given audiences around the world a reason to put down the pitchforks aimed at Fox for not selling the rights to Marvel, and to grab a bucket of popcorn instead.

I would be wrong to make the practical costumes not my first glowing remark about this movie; seeing the actor’s faces and not a digital puppet made for great, and unfortunately unique experience. Oscar Issac stole the show with his performance as the titular villain, which was made all the better by it actually being his performance. While James Spader’s performance as Ultron in Age of Ultron was great, the fact I was looking at a cartoon did take away from it. By going with practical costumes X-Men solved a common problem and hopefully paved a way for future blockbusters to follow in their wake.

Oscar Issac wasn’t the only actor who delivered an amazing performance, all of the cast on a whole did. Michael Fassbender as Magneto gave a deep and sorrowful performance that could pull tears out of a statue. Sophie Turner has given me great hope for a Dark Phoenix storyline in the future, and Jame McAvoy continued to fill the shoes I thought no one could fill after Sir Patrick Steward left the role.

There were two characters in the movies whose amount a screen time shocked me, Olivia Munn’s Psylocke and Evan Peter’s Quicksilver. Quicksilver was given a much more important role than I had assumed, which was a great surprise. He was the comedic relief in the movie and unlike with most recent blockbusters he managed to not be cheesy and to be comedic, what a relief. As in Days of Future Past there was a long and incredible sequence with the silver speedster, this one better than the last; it might be worth the price of admission just for that one part.

I was disappointed that Olivia Munn’s character was as underutilized as it was. Seeing her do as many interviews as she did led me to assume she would of had a bigger role than “pose a couple of times and say this one thing.” Psylocke wasn’t the only character left underdeveloped; Angel and Storm both left me wanting more. While I understand that the movie was packed and that not every character could get a far reaching character arc it would have been nice to get to know these characters more intimately before the standard last act fight sequence.

After the climatic final fight and the dust settled the heroes returned home to their destroyed home, and I finally got to see something that I always wanted to see: the mansion being rebuilt. While it may sound stupid I always wanted to see how the mansion kept being rebuilt after the many times it’s been destroyed, and finally seeing it should’ve made me leave the theatre with a smile on my face.

What took that smile away from me was the post-credit sequence; for the past couple of years now my hatred of them has grown exponentially, it’s to the point that I prefer the Stan Lee cameos over them. This particular waste of time had no dialogue, was as vague as possible, and over in a flash. This will be the last one I wait through ten minutes of credits for and not just pull up on Youtube when I get home.

This movie grossly surpassed my expectations. Director Bryan Singer has once again delivered a fresh break from the Marvel cinematic factory with a movie that, despite its flaws, I’m sure I will watch again.