It’s fair to say out of the all franchises out there, X-Men is the most mixed in critical acclaim, there are films like Days of Future Past and First Class in it’s ranks that deserve the highest of praise, but also duds and atrocious failures such as X-Men Origins: Wolverine (which Fox would love to say never happened) and X-Men 3: The Last Stand. In fact you can read an article I also wrote where I review each X-Men film right here. So where does this new instalment Apocalypse land in the list?
LOTS OF MUTANTS, NOT MANY CHARACTERS
One of the most exciting aspects of this film is the cast of mutants involved, we have newcomers like Psylocke and fan favourite Quicksilver as well as a welcome back to mutants we’re familiar with as their younger selves; Cyclops, Jean and Nightcrawler. While the list itself is cool, overall the characters are executed very very poorly…They’re hardly characters at all. This mostly boils down to the script, it’s flat and void of emotion. In fact there’s only one scene in the film where I felt any at all and even that scene had disastrous dialogue. Cliche’ first draft sounding dialogue can be heard throughout the entire film, it’s the worst possible base to create a film on. Some characters like Quicksilver have good motivations, but as the third act comes they are completely thrown out the window, why? because reasons? The Four Horsemen don’t even speak to each other when they join the title villain. Literally. Cmon’ Simon Kinberg, you’re being paid millions and you’re script sounds like a first draft of fan fiction written by a teenager who doesn’t know how to write a screenplay. The characters have no depth, no clear motivations and aren’t even interesting. It falls on itself in action scenes that aren’t even great in themselves, which I will get onto.
I LOVE A BITA’ CGI, WHEN IT’S GOOD THAT IS.
I consider that CGI and greenscreen is an important part of film making, it’s a tool for the director to enhance the film and do things they would never be able to achieve in reality. Nevertheless, the CGI in this film is extremely bad, especially when the budget is over £200 million pounds, the greenscreen is hurtfully noticeable too. I can’t believe the director Bryan Singer genuinely thought it was okay. Everytime CGI is used, it’s so obviously fake and unnatural, that your brain stops and says, ‘ooh that’s CGI and it doesn’t look good’. It’s painful. And lazy. Some of the CGI shots could have been done with some practical elements, but rather they CGI the whole character and surroundings making it look like a bad PlayStation 3 game. Did you know the most of the airport battle in Captain America: Civil War was filmed on greenscreen? Nope, bet you didn’t. Same can’t be said for this film.
NO ONE FELT LIKE WORKING TODAY.
The vibe I get from this film is no one really felt like putting in the work, not the writer, not the director, not the Visual FX artists, the actors, not even the make up crew for most of the time. Every department seems like they’ve done their job with the least possible effort, it’s passable for a film. But not a good film. Everything in production is lazy and it shows in the final product, Mystique is blue for less than a minutes screen time for god’s sake?! There are genuinely only 1 or 2 good scenes in the entire film, none of it is memorable. The villain has every power known to man and Bane, a man in a mask is more frightening. The horsemen have no reason to be horsemen, there are no strong character interactions between ANYONE to make me care about the pointless CGI fest that is hurting my eyes at this point towards the end of the film.
THE VERDICT
X-Men Apocalypse is a spineless addition to the X-Men franchise, it’s not as even as good as X-Men The Last Stand. Disgracefully bad dialogue and script, tired CGI and actors who don’t even want to be on set. In all honesty Batman v Superman is a better film as I can find more than one positive to that film. Maybe if you’re not as big a film fan you can turn your brain off and enjoy it, but any film you have to turn your brain off to enjoy isn’t worth the watch.
Rating: 4/10 – positives? Quicksilver maybe? Magneto’s first 20 minutes.
Words by Levi Eddie Aluede