X Men Apocalypse Review

by Lisa Johnson Mandell

Of all the multitudinous superhero movies out this summer, X-Men: Apocalypse is certainly one of them. Not as dark and dreary as Batman vs Superman, but not as fun and clever as Captain America: Civil War.

In this X-Men iteration’s favor is its remarkable cast, including uber A-listers like Jennifer Lawrence as Raven/Mystique, Michael Fassbender as the young Magneto, James McAvoy as Charles Xavier and Oscar Isaac as Apocalypse. Then there’s American Horror Story‘s talented Evan Peters as a fabulously comic Quicksilver, Olvia Munn as Psylocke and Rose Byrne as Moira MacTaggert, plus Game of Thrones‘ Sophie Turner as a young Jean Gray (I found myself wishing Sansa Stark had some of those super powers, so Ramsay could finally get what’s coming to him). Anyway, this fabulous cast is a little more than director Bryan Singer really knows what to do with.

And that’s the problem with X-Men: Apocalypse. It’s just too much. The plot is overstuffed, the CGI is relentless, and the action is overwhelming.  After awhile I found myself going numb, inured to and exhausted by the spectacle of it all. There is more going on in this movie than a casual filmgoer can process.

This is partially because the characters keep referring to events that happened in the prior movie, X-Men: Days of Future Past. If you didn’t see it or don’t remember it, you’ll be quite lost in X-Men: Apocalypse. Would it really be so difficult to cleverly bring those of us who are not fanboys/girls up to date? Since Singer hasn’t bothered to do that, I’d suggest at least reading a synopsis of the prior film, or you’ll spend entirely too much time wondering what really did happen in Washington, when you’d be better served by paying attention to all that’s happening right now on the screen in front of you.

To clue you in on the plot line, the almighty and powerful Apocalypse awakens after thousands of years in stasis and decides to recruit a team of powerful mutants to cleanse mankind and create a new world order. It’s good X-Men vs. Bad X-Men, because superhero smackdowns are quite the thing this summer. Just one last question before I leave you to X-Men: Apocalypse, and your own devices. With so many women on the X-men roster, when are they going to start calling them X-people?

Rated: PG-13

2 Hours, 16 Minutes

Get times and tickets at Fandango.com.

https://youtu.be/j2VipiNWMWQ

X MEN APOCALYPSE Review — Too Too

by Lisa Johnson Mandell