[three-star-rating]James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Oscar Isaac, Rose Byrne, Sophie Turner, Tye Sheridan, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Ben Hardy[/three-star-rating]
Apparently the four horsemen of X-Men: Apocalypse are Too Many Characters, Too Much Exposition, Too Little Joy, and The World Gets Destroyed…Again…
True, there are so many cool people in Marvel’s X-Men universe that sometimes filmmakers don’t know how to focus.
No one would expect this of director Bryan Singer, who successfully launched the entire franchise with the first two films. He’s a consummate artist whose Usual Suspects and Apt Pupil promised us solid work. He may have misfired with Superman Returns, but he returned to form in X-Men: Days of Future Past. Despite personal scandals – like a young actor claiming Singer sexually assaulted him, only to recant later – Singer still knows his movie stuff.
So, why does this one mire in middling doom?
When we notice that this isn’t Disney’s Marvel, but 20th Century Fox, we start to spot the problems. In fact, Simon Kinberg – the same writer who wrote last year’s execrable Fantastic Four bomb for 20th Century – also wrote this script. (That film was one of the worst I’ve seen in years, so I should be happy this one isn’t a complete failure.) He just cannot seem to write past exposition to get into the story quickly enough.
In fact, Singer and his amazing actors may be what keeps this flick snuffing out the X-Men flame forever.
It seems 5600 years ago, a super-being (Isaac) in Egypt was trying to gain more power. The citizens rose up and trapped him in his tomb. In 1984, some people find his tomb and bring him out of his long sleep. So he picks up his plan to redecorate the entire planet to his architectural aesthetic, possibly wiping out millions if not all humans. Whichever ones survive will get the pleasure of being slaves to mutants.
At the same time, Charles Xavier (McAvoy) is trying start his school, along with Beast (Hoult). Two of his new students are Jean Grey (Turner) and Cyclops (Sheridan). Mystique (Lawrence) is going around rescuing mutants from human torture. She finds Angel (Hardy) and Nightcrawler (Smit-McPhee), the latter whom she brings to Xavier’s school. Quicksilver (Peters) is trying to find his dad. Finally, Magneto (Fassbender) is hiding in Poland with his wife and child when a horrible tragedy brings him out of the woodwork.
That’s what I mean by too much story. There’s so much exposition getting up to the actual battles. Then, when everything happens, it’s sort of more-of-the-same, end-of-the-world stuff.
This is the same problem that made the third film, X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) so bland. At that point, Brett Ratner took over for Singer, cluttering up everything with too many characters and a boring end-of-days scenario.
[rating-key]
What saves the day are especially McAvoy, Lawrence (who doesn’t have enough to do), Fassbender, Hoult, and Isaac. their own moments, they can find ways to connect. None of this creates cohesion or arc – much less a fun story that is also emotional involved – but at least we’re not completely bored. Only Peters as Quicksilver gets unfiltered fun – the sort he got in the last film, amped up a bit for more entertainment.
The special effects are appropriately apocalyptic. However, after having seen the world destroyed in hand-to-hand combat in about a dozen other Marvel and DC Comic films, aren’t we – like the villain – hoping for something aesthetically new?
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