"X-Men: Apocalypse" review

Is it the mutant end of days or the light at the end of the tunnel?




Brian Singer returns with his fourth “X-Men” film, the ninth entry in the franchise overall, telling the story of the world’s first mutant, En Sabah Nur (Oscar Isaac), an ancient Egyptian with a god complex that awakens to the tumultuous 1980s culture of human and mutants in the early stages of societal integration.

Disgusted by what he finds the world has become in his absence, he assembles followers with the goal of tearing society down to rebuild it from the ground up, with the most powerful mutants serving as the ruling body of the new world order, leaving the veteran X-Men members to train a new generation to stop him and protect the world for mutants and humankind alike.

Sadly, what feels like a bold step towards reinvigorating the “X-Men” franchise in order to evolve creatively and add a much needed contemporary vision to the social commentary of its source material beyond the tired civil rights metaphor, quickly begins to crumble under the weight of a finicky story that has the misfortune of carrying too much material to make any particular aspect shine.

Singer’s direction is in full effect; despite the overload of plot points and character arcs running, the editing provides a very strong and impactful narrative flow to a production that can be exhausting but rarely confusing, along with excellent performances from the cast and a stupendous musical score offered once more by the criminally underrated John Ottman, equally haunting and tense as it can be playful and uplifting.

“X-Men: Apocalypse” puts a lot into motion. The subtle shift from civil rights to social equality in the face of a reluctant minority retaining power underlies a powerful drama of ideologies between a Professor X (James McAvoy) growing complacent in the world’s newfound peace, Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), uncomfortable with being revered as the mutant who saved a world with underlying tensions of xenophobia, and Magneto (Michael Fassbender), whose recent suffering of a personal loss sees him forfeit whatever humanity he may have had left in him.

Meanwhile, series icons Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Nightcrawler (Tye Sheridan, Sophie Turner, and Kodi Smit-McPhee respectively) are all introduced as coming of age teenagers to provide cultural perspective on the new status quo of the world and to inevitably become the new face of this franchise moving forward.

While all of these story arcs are well conceived and even decently executed along with a plethora of other plot threads, some set into motion and others revisited from previous films, the movie unfortunately begins to show its ever widening seams early on and never truly manages to mend them up to the moment that the credits roll.

Nearly every little piece within “X-Men: Apocalypse” stands strong on its own and even functions well in execution. Tragically however, the movie just can’t hold together as a whole.

Despite ambitious storytelling at work with lofty themes, excellent acting, tremendous production design, and very cool action set pieces, the film buckles hard under its own weight, cramming in so many overpowering little details within its two and a half hour runtime that it honestly felt like material for 3 movies jammed into a single production.

Fassbender and McAvoy’s performances continue to be stellar but they just don’t have the room to go as far as they’re character arcs should in the flurry of action and plot that leaves additional cast members competing for screentime, including the aforementioned teenagers, whose chemistry is so tight and amusing that it almost feels insulting that they’re given so little to do.

Evan Peters reprises his role as Quicksilver, who provides a neat levity for the cast while managing to still be a decently realized character that also unfortunately is limited in how much he’s allowed to explore himself by time constraints.

Nobody is hit with this worse than Apocalypse himself. While the villain has always been something of a problematically thin character, Isaac does manage to inject him with just enough gravitas to cement him as a truly powerful and sinister presence.

I can only imagine that had any other actor played him, the character would have been an utter embarrassment, as his one note journey for humanity’s destruction and his endless droning about how “lost” his “children” are sinks to nigh parody levels of embarrassment when stripped of his actor’s demanding screen presence.

Conversely, by the time all of the dense plot threads are underway for the set up of the more extravagant action set pieces, I was so exhausted by the film that I couldn’t even muster up the energy to get excited.

That’s not to say that the action is particularly bad, not at all. It just unfortunately comes too little too late for a narrative that is generally cohesive but overly stuffed. Although the film is bursting with excellent components, the inability to chop it down and focus on a select few to highlight and develop results in everything being played out at once in a production that never comes together as a solid whole.

The exhausting amount of content throwing itself at the viewer is frustrating enough without getting into the odd casting bits that sounded good on paper but fell apart in execution (Sophie Turner’s struggling accent, “40 year old” Nicholas Hoult and Lucas Till, etc.) but it’s truly sad to see the very thing that made this franchise withstand the test of time be eliminated in favor of bigger production.

Simply put, “X-Men: Apocalypse” is rarely relatable. The film has made the unfortunate error of mistaking intricacy for intimacy. So much of the writing of this film is well intentioned in its complexity but sadly forgets to remind us often enough of why we care for these characters to begin with.

Moments of impactful tenderness such as the reunion of X, Magneto, and Mystique in “Days of Future Past,” the courtship of Mystique and Beast in “First Class,” or the parental confrontation in “X2” are noticeably absent, leaving a story that is bold and hefty but unfortunately uninvolving.

The more I write about this film the angrier that I get. This isn’t a terrible movie and its heart is definitely in the right place. Unfortunately, in cramming in content and story that could have been easily adaptable into a new mythology arc to be carried out across several movies instead of a single feature, it has cheated its franchise out of potential longevity and become a poster child for bigger not meaning better.

“X-Men: Apocalypse” has a lot to love but the unfortunate decision to drown out quality material with quality material has resulted in a film so painfully less than the sum of its parts that it becomes hard to even recommend, akin to watching a 3 course meal by a renowned chef consumed not in bites and servings that can allow for savoring but piled onto one plate to be shoveled down one’s gullet like slop.

The final experience is just too unsatisfactory despite the incredible makeup and craftsmanship behind it.

4 Sad Wolverines out of 10