Release Date: May 27th, 2016
Director: Bryan Singer
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Nicholas Hoult, Sophie Turner, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Oscar Issacas, Rose Bryne, Evan Peters, Ben Hardy, Alexandra Shipp, Olivia Munn, Lucas Till, Tye Sheridan
Initial Thoughts
Let’s be honest. Generall I walk into most films that I review having had bought my ticket at least a week ahead of time. In some cases months before. This time around I bought my tickets to X-Men: Apocalypse a mere days before the movie was released. I wasn’t excited. i wasn’t thrilled. And when I walked out of the theatre that feeling didn’t change. For a minute I even flaunted the idea of not writing a review. you have to unerstand that the movie wasn’t exceptionally bad, nor was it exceptionally good. It was just alright. it had a lot of flaws, but it was certainly watchable. It just wasn’t great.
The problem with feeling like a movie is middle of the road is that reviews tend to come off negative from me. You see I pinpoint the problems that the movie had, while I only spotlight a couple of the advantages. likely because the failures are more apparent than the things that were just okay. disclaimer warned let’s get into this.
The best characters in this movie were no doubt Jean Grey and Quicksilver. They each had some sort of actual motivation behind the actions they did. Evan Peters as Quicksilver was exceptional. It wasn’t a large part, but it could have easily been under acted. instead, what I found was that he played the character with nuance. I really envied him. The more that I watched him the more that I was drawn in to his performance. As for Jean Grey she surprised me making me like her. i notoriously have never been fond of the Jean Grey character, but here I actually really liked her quite a bit. there was a bit of spunk and caution in her personality that Sophie Turner brought to her. She as a result felt rather relateable.
One of the things that disappointed me the most was the lack of minority actors and their highlight in this film. For one we saw the introduction of Jubilee in the film. Heck, they teased a lot out of her in the time coming out to the release that I saw. however as far as the actual movie goes, she was hardly in it. She was just briefly there and then pushed to the side. When you think of it other than Storm we really didn’t have characters of color (Yes, I know Olivia Munn can count, but she is half and her character is traditionally a minority so I’m not sure of the intention there). I just kind of wish we had more Jubilee.
Another thing that bugged me was Magneto’s time in Poland. His actual time there was not an issue. What irked me was the way that he switched languages so frequently. it was clear that he had learned Polish and was speaking it. However, as time went on when he got frustrated he defaulted to English. Now I know Erik is fluent in English, but he is German. One would think that his exclamations of frustration towards others would either be in his mother tongue or the langue he’s using with others. So why did he just speak English. oh yeah, because that means it wouldn’t need to be subtitled. Honestly it just didn’t feel natural and stood out to me.
On the plus side, I really enjoyed well. Honestly, I can’t think of much else. I did quite like Nightcrawler.
The structure of the fil was basic, but overall troublesome int he sense that it left the entire story forgettable, though part of this is because of Apocalypse. The actual structure was broken down into the standard three parts. The opening introduced Apocalypse. Then it went through and introduced the series of new characters we were to follow and their personalities. Act 2 switched to actually setting up the threat that Apocalypse posed. The problem that we got here is that we were never actually shown the threat. We were just told. It wasn’t until the 3rd act that everything came to a head. That’s the problem the 3rd act was all action, but it was hard to care because we hadn’t seen any issues prior. yes, it was a threat to the world, but it felt to sudden and in genuine.
Apocalypse was a terrible villain. one that could be easily forgotten. He had four horsemen and he hardly used them. He wasn’t fleshed out about what he actually wanted The result was that the threat in the movie was flimsy. It’s hard to become invested when you don’t truly see the threat. There is a saying to show not tell. Apocalypse was all tell until the very end. Heck, even in Act 3 when the action increased and he started t make good on his threats, Apocalypse himself was mostly talk and little action.
Final Thoughts
Overall, I liked it, but even hours later it is slipping from my memory. in fact, this film felt like a good stepping stone for the next one. They set up a new team to take focus. A team who I actually like the characters more than not. It’s just this movie didn’t really properly balanced.
Grade: 6.9
What did you think of the movie?
So, I pondered... 