Bryan Singer is back at the helm once again to introduce all the mutants that were once introduced before except now they’re in the 80’s. Yay? More like nay. This film might have been better if it was from the early 2000’s, but in this day and age it’s just too bland and formulaic to actually be all that great.
One of the first and most powerful mutants, Apocalypse, has been woken up. Now he’s mad at the world and wants to reshape it as he sees fit. He recruits some bad mutants and sets his sights on accomplishing his mission of global destruction. Who will stop him? Professor X and his school children of course! It’s very standard stuff and does little to try and reinvigorate the franchise the way ‘First Class‘ and ‘Days of Future Past‘ did. No, this film serves as just a stepping stone used to try and get the franchise back to its original setup.
And that includes adding some new (old) characters and making Professor X bald in the least spectacular way possible. Really, just have him shave it off rather than what actually happens! Returning characters and actors include James McAvoy as Professor X and Michael Fassbender as Magneto. Both of them are really great actually, even if their characters falter a bit sometimes. Magento has some great stuff to do in this film and gets some really emotional and amazing moments. Jennifer Lawrence is back as Mystique. She seems very fed up with this franchise and doesn’t seem to have any energy or motivation at all. Plus there’s the weird decision to make one of the main X-Men villains a hero now? I’m guessing just because Lawrence is a star and having her as the villain just wouldn’t do. Nicholas Hoult returns as Beast and puts in a decent performance, Rose Byrne is serviceable as Moira MacTaggert and Evan Peters is pretty good and still a load of fun as Quicksilver, once again stealing the film with one impressive looking sequence. Oh, and Hugh Jackman has a shoehorned in cameo as Wolverine in a sequence which is kind of good but also not needed at all and feels tacked on.
Among the new cast members are Tye Sheridan as a thankfully not very annoying Cyclops, Sophie Turner as a bit of a one dimensional Jean Grey who can’t act all that amazingly and Kodi Smit-Mcphee as a pretty good Nightcrawler. And then there’s the baddies. Alexandra Shipp plays Storm, who is a bit annoying and quite unlikable, Olivia Munn who is slightly more annoying and unlikable and then Ben Hardy as Angel who is even more annoying and unlikable. I guess as villains they should be unlikable, but their characters are just really annoying and unpleasant to watch. Apocalypse is supposedly picking the most powerful mutants to help him and yet all they have is some wings and a sword. Makes no sense. And then there’s Apocalypse himself, played by the great Oscar Isaac. Firstly, I’m not overly keen on the design. Why they decided to just make him a weird blue purple colour rather than his cool comic book counterpart is beyond me. And then there’s the acting and the character himself. He’s a bit one dimensional and boring really. He just shows up, uses some powers sometimes and others at different times, seemingly forgetting he can decapitate people with sand and then just shouts a lot in a weird voice. And that’s the extent of ‘the first and most powerful mutant’. Pretty lame really.
The special effects are pretty good, but the action is just bland. Apart from the cool Quicksilver scene, everything is just people shooting their powers at someone else and it all looks pretty boring. Just throwing in lots of different colours doesn’t make your film look interesting. And that’s what keeps this film down really. There’s not really much thought beyond just making a standard superhero movie. 10 years ago it may have worked, but by the standards of today, these films just need to be better.
JACK’SS CORE: 3/5
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