Friday 27 May 2016

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

Genre

Action | Sci-Fi

Director

Bryan Singer

Country

USA

Cast

James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Oscar Isaac, Nicholas Hoult, Rose Byrne, Tye Sheridan, Sophie Turner, Olivia Munn, Lucas Till, Evan Peters, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Alexandra Shipp, Josh Helman, Ben Hardy, Lana Condor, Hugh Jackman, Stan Lee

Storyline

Upon awakening after thousands of years, Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac) is disillusioned with the world as he finds it and recruits a team of powerful mutants, including a disheartened Magneto (Michael Fassbender), to cleanse mankind and create a new world order, over which he will reign. As the fate of the Earth hangs in the balance, Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) with the help of Professor X (James McAvoy) must lead a team of young X-Men to stop their greatest nemesis and save mankind from complete destruction.

Opinion

Even though "X-Men: The Last Stand" screwed up the original trilogy, I didn't think, not even for a moment, that the ending chapter of the prequels trilogy could have been a disappointment. I mean, Bryan Singer is still directing and every single X-Men flick he has done so far turned out more than just fine. After Wednesday night I don't know what to believe in anymore.

"X-Men: Apocalypse" is a poor X-Men installment that fails to live up to its name, and once again proves that the third is always quite considerably the worst film of a trilogy.

The writing is a real mess and the biggest problem of the film. The story feels flat and too many times focuses on the wrong thing. Ravel, for example, gets tons of screen time and most of the time her story isn't very interesting or meaningful. The dialogue is quite awful for the whole running time, and sometimes it gets very cheesy and dull. The character development is basically non-existent, and some of the younger mutants are treated like garbage almost like they were thrown in the story because they were short on mutants - why are Storm and Psylocke even here? Just to cast two good looking women? Same goes with Wolverine and Moira MacTaggert, I guess they wanted two big names in the film.

And the villain. Oh my god the villain. What have they done to Apocalypse? Not only he is one of the most powerful mutants, but he also has an interesting and complex story and I was very intrigued to see him on screen. And you know what they did to him? They turned him into just another bad guy that wants to rule the world. He is dull, not that menacing and he is "dismissed" quickly in a confused and not very engaging final battle.

However the film wasn't a complete waste of time and money. Magneto, which once again I repeat is my favourite mutant and villain, is treated a little bit better than the others. He gets some quality screen time and Michael Fassbender's performance is rock solid, but Singer eventually screws up.

One of the things I was excited about was Quicksilver. I am not a huge fan of him, but I love, absolutely love the way Evan Peters portrayed him in the past. I'm super happy to say that he was amazing. He easily stole the show with his slow-motion scene, a scene that was so amazing that topped that slow-motion sequence of him in "X-Men: Days of Future Past". And he brings some humour which is exactly what the film needed.

Sure, the special effects are great and so is the action, and I have to say that Oscar Isaac did a pretty good job as Apocalypse considering the poor script he had to work with, but this is not enough, especially if the film is a sequel to two great films.

8 comments:

  1. Lo considerò un film a metà.
    Non ti ci puoi accanire contro, ma nemmeno osannarlo. Sta in quella sottile linea tra il "discreto" e il "mediocre".

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    1. Io mi aspettavo molto di più. Che delusione!

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  2. I am always confused in what order they all go. I know the first 3- but then there are 2 (?) Wolverine films and 3 with the younger versions of X and Magneto and I don't know which 3 come first. Obviously this is the last one but not sure about the other 2. Shame this one doesn't work well

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    1. I know, it's a lot confusing. The first Wolverine takes place before the first 3 X-Men, and after X-Men First Class and X-Men Days of Future Past. The second Wolverine should take place after X-Men The Last Stand, but I'm not sure.

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  3. Great review...I'm now even more convinced that this final installment will be a waste of my time and money. Oh well :\

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  4. I don't know what crack Sonia is smoking, or what tainted heroin Courtney is mainlining. "Waste of my time and money"?? What movie did you see? And what were you expecting from an X-Men movie?? Did you think you bought tickets to The Revenent and went into the wrong door?
    Were there minor things they could have improved on? Sure, there always is. And they were that, MINOR gripes. Overall this movie did exactly what it needed to do, and gave everyone a helluva good and intense ride. Yeah, PsyLock was kinda lame, but eh, get over it.

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    1. I think I know what movie I saw. And I sure did not have a good time. And we live in a free world where everyone should be entitled to their own opinion without some person too coward to even show his/her name that insults whoever has a different opinion.

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