X-MEN: APOCALYPSE REVIEWED
“X-Men: Apocalypse” proves that Bryan Singer cares about continuity about as much as any Silver Age comic book creator. Well, the early ones. After Roy Thomas started, all of the nerd writers took over. Jumping forward a decade after the end of “Days of Future Past”, we get the basic new way of things. New students are arriving at Xavier’s, while Mystique is touring the globe as a mutant savior. She rescues mutants from entanglements in Europe, while a new mutant figure awakens in Egypt. This figure dubbed Apocalypse feels that the world has turned against mutantdom and he wants the fittest to survive. This results in a convoluted attempt to rebuild his Horsemen and use Cerebro to make world leaders fire all of their Nukes into Space. After all, it kinda worked in “Superman IV: The Quest for Peace”.
The rest of the film is spent trying to cap the trilogy started with First Class, work in as much setup work for future films as possible and to skirt around a new emerging continuity. The young cast is amazing and the least said about Singer’s directorial fetish gaze of Nightcrawler…the better. “Apocalypse” is easily the weakest of the prequel trilogy, as most of its major moments are aped from prior X-Men films. That being said, it’s entertaining enough to keep me engaged throughout the film and I eagerly await what is coming next. Maybe not from Singer, but the New Mutants news keeps my hopes lifted.
The further the new films stay from Wolverine and Phoenix…the better. They have become mainstream media crutches for telling non-comic stories about the X-Men. After all, there is a wealth of material that FOX is hording from the MCU. It’s about time they put it to use and justified their segregation. In regards to the Apocalypse character design, it still looks horrible on film. But, not as horrible as Olivia Munn cosplaying as American Psylocke.
FILM STATS
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Runtime: 2hrs 22 mins
Rating: PG-13
