'X-Men: Apocalypse' Review

Image from Heroic Hollywood

By Diego Coya 

X-Men: Apocalpyse is the latest X-Men film that is directed by Bryan Singer and stars Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, Oscar Issac, Jennifer Lawrence, Sophie Turner, and Evan Peters. It is also the third film in the X-Men prequel trilogy, which also includes X-Men: First Class and X-Men: Days of Future Past. Apocalypse follows the story of the first mutant Apocalypse, and how he creates havoc on the planet after he is awakened after thousands of years. He recruits a team known as the four horsemen (Magneto, Storm, Psylocke, and Angel), and their goal is to create a new world order and to cleanse mankind. This leads to Professor X and Raven to lead a team of young superheroes to save mankind and to go against Apocalypse and the four horsemen.

As someone who has been a huge fan of Bryan Singer’s X-Men films, I was incredibly excited for X-Men: Apocalypse. It had really huge shoes to fill in, especially after X-Men: Days of Future Past which is not only the best X-Men movie, but it was one of the absolute best movies of 2014. After watching X-Men Apocalypse opening night, I can say that it was an overall decent film, but nothing spectacular. While there is a good amount of things that I liked about the film, there were some problems that I had with it as well. All of Bryan Singer’s X-Men films have had great acting, and this movie was no different when it came to that.

The performances for the most part, were excellent. Michael Fassbender nails the role of Magneto perfectly, in my opinion he is the actor who gives the best performance in the entire movie. There is a scene that takes place in the woods that involves his character, and it is easily one of the most memorable scenes in the X-Men franchise. James McAvoy who plays Professor Xavier, also does terrific work. The chemistry between Fassbender and McAvoy is brilliant because they play off each other so well. Oscar Issac, who plays Apocalypse does a very good job. Although I found the villain to be a bit clichéd, I thought Issac did a really good job at portraying him as menacing and I loved the voice they had for this character.

The newcomers are really great too, such as Kodi Smit-McPhee, Sophie Turner, and Tye Sheridan. They all do a fantastic job at playing young characters of Nightcrawler, Jean Grey, and Cyclops; I am really excited to see them in the upcoming installments in the franchise. The action scenes are well done, and it had very good direction. The third act is action packed and it was really entertaining to watch. Evan Peters who plays Quicksilver, has a scene in this film that is really awesome and had the audience cheering and laughing throughout the entire scene, the song that was in the scene was perfect!

While there were certainly some things that I liked about the film, there were some negatives about it as well. My biggest problem with the movie is the pacing. The first act is actually kind of rough to sit through, at times I felt as if it was really dragging. There is a lot of setting up and it was kind of hard for me to get into it at times. After a certain scene, it really picks up and the pacing gets a lot better. I also had a problem with the four horsemen, I essentially found them to be very useless. Other than Magneto, I wasn’t fond of the other three characters, they were actually wasted. Another problem I had was Jennifer Lawrence’s performance in the movie. She gave a very weak performance and I felt as if she was phoning it in throughout the film. I also had a problem with Rose Byrne’s character in the movie. Her performance was solid, but after watching the film, I felt as if she did not make a huge impact at all. I felt the movie could have also worked without her character.

Even with the problems that I had with the film, I would still recommend it, especially if you’re an X-Men fan. I don’t believe that it deserves the 46% it currently has on Rotten Tomatoes, it is certainly better than that. It’s nowhere near as good as Captain America: Civil War or Deadpool, but it is better than Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, in my opinion. The good outweigh the bad, and we ultimately get a solid film, rather than an excellent one.

Rating: 7/10