X-Men: Apocalypse - Cinema Review

The Fox Studios X-Men movies have always fallen in the middle between the grim solemnity and gritty brawls of the DC films and the snappy, character banter and flowing fantasy fights of the Marvel universe of films. They also tend to fall in the middle of these two extremes in terms of quality and X-Men Apocalypse is regrettably no exception.

I took some time after seeing the film to let opinions gestate which in this instance allowed an increasing number of flaws to boil to the surface. The initial reaction of my cinema viewing however was a positive one and I'll revisit that reaction later.

Following on from 2014's  Days Of Future Past and 2011's First Class before that, Xavier's school is established at this point, as are mutants in the eyes of the public and governments. Many mutants still wander lost or disillusioned with Charles' ideals but there is no Brotherhood of Mutants yet and Magneto himself is trying to lay low and live a quiet life amongst humans and his new family since the events of Future Past.

The film actually starts in Ancient Egypt setting up Apocalypse, his penchant for body swapping and stealing abilities, his God-like worshipped status, his four loyal "horsemen" and how he becomes indisposed from 3000BC to the 1980's when the film takes place.

A lot of aspects of the film are divisive and Apocalypse himself is one of them. I feel Oscar Issac provides a good performance as the villain and his presentation, behaviour and voice are all suitably imposing and aloof. His motivation however is never entirely clear which given some of the unabashed exposition elsewhere in the film is a surprising oversight.

"From the ashes of their world, we'll build a better one" So like, Ancient Egypt again but with strong people?

Expected terms like "cleansing the world" come up often but whether that equates to killing everyone and starting anew, tearing down the structures of civilisation and brainwashing people into worshipping Apocalypse or something else entirely is something many audiences have been unclear on. It didn't personally bother me during my viewing but it's one of the most common criticisms I've heard. As for Apocalypse's "horsemen" we have Magneto, Angel, Psylocke and Storm and their motivations and characters are also somewhat suspect.

To start with Storm, making her new debut in the reboot since Halle Berry's version. She lives as leader of a small group of street thieves in Cairo, using her powers for simple distraction of market sellers and authorities. Meeting Apocalypse, he enhances her powers to the level of the weather-goddess we're used to but apart from that what he offers her is unclear. Storm idolises Mystique, as do many new characters, so she has the ideals of an X-Men recruit despite thievery presumably brought on by poverty. Would she not object to Apocalypse's talk of "cleansing the world"? Or is she as unclear on his motivations as the audience?

"Can I have more dialogue?"

"No, I need to demolish Cairo."

"What?"

"I mean...Humanity has lost its way."

Angel is introduced as an unwilling prisoner in an underground mutant fight club. Injured in a match against Nightcrawler he becomes a belligerent drunk until Apocalypse finds him and gives him new metal wings. Despite this painful process I guess I can see how Angel would feel indebted to Apocalypse but again, his one line of dialogue implying involuntary involvement in the fight club suggests he might too be against global annihilation and tyrannical Ancient Egyptian God worship.

Magneto's motivations make perhaps the most sense. We see Erik attempting to blend in with humanity. We see his deep love for his wife and children but eventually identity being discovered authorities attempt to apprehend him. Through panic and incompetence his family is killed in some quite astonishing (almost unbelievable) bad luck.

Fassbender acts the hell out of it but in terms of writing it's down there with how Charles loses his hair. In terms of setting him on the path of "Fuck humanity" it works well enough or at least better than his counterparts.

And finally we have Psylocke whose motivations and character I'll explore with the same amount of dialogue and backstory she's given in the film...

So the plot of the film makes enough sense in its barest skeletal form but any attempt to think further on it exposes a lot of its flaws, unnecessary choices and forced eventualities. Dealing with a world-ending God mutant like Apocalypse naturally puts the story on a larger scale but the writing seems to struggle with how to deal with that and the ever-expanding cast. This results in some of the characters literally standing around with nothing to do whilst others catch up to the next milestone in the story.

"At least Gambit would've brought a pack of cards..."

I'm not as adversed to the lack of mutant-on-mutant fight scenes as some critics (who were perhaps still giddy from Civil War) but what exists is rather cramped to one end of the film and nothing special in terms of choreography and flair.

Which leads to perhaps the biggest overall problem of the film in that it is so unremarkable for something so grandiose and ambitious. The plot is generic if arguably serviceable, the fighting is mediocre compared to the inventive use of superpowers in other films, the dialogue is too much in exposition and too little in actual character and the tone is uncomfortably jarring at times.

This last point is epitomised by what is otherwise a great action sequence of Quicksilver saving the entire mansion's students from an explosion. This moment is prefaced by significant events of injury and loss signalling a low point for the film's heroes but in-keeping with Quicksilver's jovial character the action scene is treated goofy and comical going so far as to set it to Eurythmics for 80's nostalgia points.

The scene in isolation is fun albeit arguably derivative of Quicksilver's similar scene in Days Of Future Past but in context it's tonally staggering and there are several other moments of humour a little too close to intense drama that give the film an uncomfortable flow. I'm grateful there is humour in the film to stop it becoming Man Of Steel levels of dour and pretentious but the pacing leaves it as detrimental as it is refreshing, effectively cancelling each other out.

To bring the dialogue into scrutiny is to also bring up one of the film's strengths oddly enough, which ties into my initial positive response overall. The dialogue is poorly written for the most part and at times downright ludicrous and awful. Whether Bryan Singer has lost the plot or this arises from having four different writers on the film, it is a crippling weakness that is only alleviated by the excellent performances from most of the main cast. Michael Fassbender in particular is on top form acting especially during his family man incognito subplot.

Michael returns from his first read of the script.

The fact that Fassbender, McAvoy, Evan Peters and others are still entertaining and engaging with some of the shoddy lines they have to work with is testament to their acting ability. New characters like Storm, Angel, Nightcrawler, Cyclops and Jean Grey are given the briefest of set ups but the actors do an admirable job trying to breathe life into the handful of lines they're given. Speaking of Cyclops and Jean, who receive more of a focus and an attempt at characterisation, whilst Tye Sheridan and particularly Sophie Turner step into the role of the characters accurately and effectively without simply emulating their predecessors, the classic romance between them is woefully empty.

Victim again to the sparse characterisation and non-expositional dialogue, the pair only really bond through shared proximity during traumatic events and actual chemistry is practically non-existent. In fact, if we strictly follow the film's mishandled portrayal, Scott has no interest in Jean until he actually sees her through his new power-restraining glasses and Jean shows no interest in Scott until he displays his powers in an unorthodox lumberjacking of Charles' favourite tree. If this is what we're supposed to go on in terms of budding romance, theirs is a completely shallow relationship based only on appearance and destructive power...Things actually offered freely by Apocalypse so perhaps these two should be horsemen instead...

"I like you now I know you're hot."

"I like you now I know you have WMD eyes."

To talk about the cinematography and aforementioned choreography I'm picking Wolverine's cameo which is essentially an advert for the upcoming R-Rated Wolverine 3. Logan goes 100% bath salts on Colonel Stryker's guards, for once actually showing a lot of the blood and gore that would naturally come from an angry, metal-clawed immortal beast man going to town on his captors. The choreography and camerawork is so bland however that were it not for Hugh Jackman's rabid performance and the novelty of the blood this scene would be entirely forgettable. 

This comes to a climax when Jean psychically undoes some of the brainwashing (I think that's what happened anyway) and Logan decides not to skewer her, Scott and Nightcrawler instead escaping into the wintry forest. With thought-out cinematography this could be a perfectly adequate, even good scene but for some reason we get a static, flat angle shot of the door with Wolverine monkeying out into the snow looking like a ridiculous shirtless tramp rather than a deadly feral mutant weapon. The film is plagued by numerous thoughtless choices like this.

One of those choices is behind what they're looking at...

Coming to a recommendation for Avenue Q: Armageddalypse is tricky because I did enjoy the film on my initial viewing and despite a myriad of problems, the performances and visuals carried me through enough that the flaws didn't detract extensively from an overall engagement. That said, this has some of the worst writing since Last Stand (Ironic considering the film makes a snide jab at it) and the longer you think about it the more of a mess the story structurally and tonally becomes. 

If you're a fan of the X-Men films, Apocalypse is not so bad as to abandon the series altogether, even if it does do some baffling things with the continuity. There's some fun moments, striking performances and visually impressive set pieces to enjoy but don't go expecting poignant plots, resonant or memorable dialogue or inventive execution of fight scenes.

Don't go with your brain essentially. The recommendation can only really go out to fans and even then it's a disappointingly lacklustre entry into the series. The future is ambiguous but ominous for the mainline X-Men films at this point. They might be better focusing on spin off films, centred on individual characters as they've done with Wolverine and might be doing with Gambit rather than trying to juggle their huge ensemble of characters and tell a coherent plot involving them all.