Everyone likes a good superhero movie, but X-Men: Apocalypse unfortunately didn’t meet up to expectation. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a bad movie; I quite enjoyed it! However, it did lack the extra ‘unf’ to make it a good superhero movie. For starters, the movie was slacking in action scenes. Most of the time, when a hero or villain attacked, the other side didn’t even try too hard to fight back; they sort of just accepted the blow like “oh, I am getting hit…nice” The only real action happened near the end at the mountains, but even then, I felt like I was watching a dance more than a fighting sequence. I also felt like they degraded the essence that is Professor X. They made him seem so weak and silly as opposed to the wise, powerful being he is. I get it; he’s still young, and he still has a lot to go through before he becomes The Professor X that we all know, but this feeble portrayal of him didn’t work for me.
Speaking of weak, the idea of bringing Moira back was totally unnecessary. She might’ve helped in X-Men: First Class, but I don’t see how, in any way, she is important to Apocalypse. She was just there. Perhaps the only importance of her was that she leads to Apocalypse being awoken and to Charles finding Apocalypse, which then ended up backfiring on him….so I guess we wouldn’t have a movie without Moira…thanks it’s all your fault Moira! Other than that, she really doesn’t do anything else in the movie. Then again, maybe I didn’t notice her because I kept getting distracted by the fact that Apocalypse reminded me of Mr. Freeze from Batman and Robin combined with Ronan from Guardians of the Galaxy.
I was also distracted as I waited for Storm to actually do something in the film. She appears somewhat 20 minutes into the movie and uses her power to create the tiniest sandstorm. A tiny sandstorm won’t cover you if you try to steal from the market! Apocalypse strengthens her powers, but we don’t actually see her use them until the very end…for 5 seconds. Throughout the whole movie, we have this girl, emphasizing how much she looks up to Mystique, and we have the cameras zooming up on her during random parts of the movie, and all you give her is 5 measly seconds of just small bolts of lightning? I’m sorry, but there will never be a Storm like Halle Berry.
And of course, what’s an X-Men movie without Wolverine? Don’t get your hopes up though, He’s only in it for 5 minutes, acting like a wild monster. He doesn’t say anything, but hey, he provided more action in those 5 minutes than the other characters did in the whole movie. I
do have to say, though, that Quicksilver’s big scene was epic! They had special cameras for his scene since everything around him had to be in slow motion. The cameras filmed with 3600 frames per second, which paid off because the scene was incredible! Not to mention, the music was really good too (it’s set in the 80s, who doesn’t love 80s music?!). I loved Quicksilver’s character, or maybe I’m just a big Evan Peter’s fan. He brought the comic relief to the movie, and who doesn’t love a man with grey hair? Nightcrawler also brought comic relief with his naïve personality as he seemed so lost and in awe of everything.
As for Cyclops, aka Scott, I don’t know how I felt about him. There have been many versions of him in the films. I’m used to James Marsden as Cyclops in the X-Men trilogy and in a short cameo in Days of Future Past, and Scot made various short cameos as his younger self in X-Men Origins: Wolverine and in First Class, but Tye Sheridan as Cyclops in Apocalypse made me sort of uncomfortable. Maybe it’s because I’m not used to the teenage version of Cyclops, but Tye Sheridan didn’t work for me. He seemed too cocky and clueless. Though I am sure that version of Scott will get better with age.
Overall, X-Men: Apocalypse was an alright movie, but it could’ve been better.
