X-Men: Apocalypse (May 2016)

Official Australian release date: 19/5/16. Viewed: 21/5/16.

Director: Bryan Singer

Actors: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Oscar Isaac, Jennifer Lawrence

Genre: Action / Sci-Fi

Rating: M

‘X-Men: Apocalypse’ is the sixth X-Men film and the final piece in the second trilogy (2011–2016), fitting in after ‘Days of Future Past’ and before ‘X-Men’ (2000). Although the time travel of the previous film does leave a somewhat altered “reality”, so it doesn’t necessarily all fit together nicely. Plot’s pretty simple – Apocalypse/En Sabah Nur (Isaac) is the first mutant, with the ability to collect other mutants’ powers, and he’s now been resurrected and wants to destroy the world so only the strong survive. Plenty of Nazi parallels, and they use Magneto (Fassbender) and his Jewish past to emphasize this.

Some of the films like repeating the same territory, as they have to re-establish the “new” characters: Jean (Turner), Cyclops (Sheridan), Havoc (Till), Nightcrawler (Smit-McPhee) and how they fit in with Xavier (McAvoy) and his school. I guess after the other two films, they needed Mystique (Lawrence), but I’m not sure why she needs to play such a big part. And Beast (Hoult) is mostly wasted, along with Apocalypse’s Horsemen – Storm (Shipp), Psylocke (Munn) & Angel (Hardy). Some great CGI and large-scale chaos shown, but also some nice soft-touch moments, particularly between Charles & Erik – something Singer did well in the original film. One of the best bits is near the end when they almost verbatim repeat something from the 2000 film – and there’s another nice tongue-in-cheek moment when they come out of seeing ‘Return of the Jedi’ (forgot to mention the film’s set in 1983!)

I loved Metallica’s ‘The Four Horsemen’ playing when Apocalypse turns Angel into the metal-winged Archangel, worked great for the scene. Quicksilver (Peters) – despite being dead in the ‘Avengers’ films and only 10 years younger than Fassbender – is a very welcome addition here and has some great moments, particularly the Eurythmics bit. It doesn’t follow any particular comic storyline completely, but borrows from a few, with only a few nods to the 1990s ‘Age of Apocalypse’. Magneto’s motivation could’ve been better, for me, but the scenes he and Xavier are in are always good. Issac is menacing but not too over-the-top as Apocalypse, but somehow, even with the world (slowly!) crumbling, it doesn’t all click quite as well as you feel it could. Definitely a worthy addition to the franchise, but still a shame they never reached the pinnacle set by the original X-Men film.  

Overall: Fitting finale.

Gav's Rating: 3.5 stars.