Most mega-budget Hollywood popcorn summer special f/x super-hero extravaganzas don't really give you a lot to think about when you leave the theater. They're two hours of mindless entertainment, right? Utterly forgettable gloss. So while it's still fresh in my mind I should let you know about the very few highlights of X-Men: Apocalypse, the third film featuring the new/young X-Men and sixth in the X-Men film franchise. #1: Game of Thrones star Sophie Turner (Jane Grey here) is a bona-fide movie star. #2 "Sweet Dreams" is always a good song for a montage. #3 Psylocke's outfit is better (and cooler) than most of this movie.
Saying that X-Men: Apocalypse is one of the lesser X-Men films isn't really saying a hell of a lot. I wasn't the biggest fan of the first two or Matthew Vaughan's First Class entry. The last one, the time travel thriller featuring Peter Dinklage, Days of Future Past, was good, but my favorite will probably always be Brett Ratner's Last Stand, the third one, and the one everyone hated (perhaps I'm just a Ratner fan, because I think I gave Rush Hour 3 four stars), mostly just based on entertainment. After all, we're not seeing these types of movies to reflect on Auschwitz (Magneto's past) or to think of mutants and humans as a civil rights metaphor (groan). We're here to see a fucking spectacle!
If you haven't seen any of the previous X films, then good luck understanding literally any of this. I actually read X-Men comic books and even I'm confused at the timeline used here. So Mystique is Jennifer Lawrence in 1983 but is Rebecca Romijn-Stamos in 2000? Why did Michael Fassbender as Magneto age so fast in twenty years to become old man Ian Mckellan? Are they just two different timelines or did they just forget the first three films? Or did the producers just hope we forgot?
Either way, this new film is still about mutants at a school for mutants battling evil. The evil this time around is the blue villain from the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers movie. No? It isn't? Oh, it's Oscar Isaac as Apocalypse (who also looks like DC comic's uber-villain Darkseid for some reason). Apocalypse is an old God woken up and goes about destroying the world for no good reason (I guess he wants to live in rubble?). A few mutants join him without question for no good reason, then the X-Men band together to fight him. Simple, right? Sure. And for the most part, it is a stupid, entertaining film. Because there's so much backstory you're just supposed to remember and various characters showing up that are never really fleshed out, the film feels like a hodge podge of various ideas mashed together. What I want out of an X-Men film is a cohesive, established group in costumes (Olivia Munn's Psylocke is one of the few wearing a costume...and it's a fan boy's wet dream) fighting bad guys. This is the sixth movie, why are we still doing introductions and beginnings like the origin of Cyclops? And you can kind of tell that this franchise is a bit of a mess because Jennifer Lawrence is a main character in this film and strangely a hero, even though her character has always been a villain in the comics (more screen time for the stars!).
I suppose in the inevitable 7th film there will be even more intro's, more world building, and perhaps a new re-cast/re-build when the big stars price themselves out. Jennifer Lawrence and Michael Fassbender both give relatively tame performances here, especially compared to films they seem to actually care about. The one shining spot in this film is Quicksilver, a B-hero played by Evan Peters, who was just awesome in American Horror Story: Hotel last year. He's amusing, fun to watch, and has the best scene in the film: a slo-mo rescue of kids in an exploding building while "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" by the Eurythmics is playing. That scene is entertaining as hell. I wish this movie was, too. **1/2 (out of ****)
