Could have been great, but ruined by botched ending

Rating: 8/10 (19 May 2016)

Huge fan of the comics here. As X-Men: Apocalypse began, the opening scenes instantly took my breath away. DAMN good!! Apocalypse's subsequent awakening (due to the meddling of Moira MacTaggart!) and search for his four horsemen were also pretty great. I loved seeing Scott Summers and Jean Grey. All the great stuff with Magneto was also nearly perfect. The movie builds up to its climax for a long time, and it's all good (though not quite perfect) - but once the climactic events begin in the second half of the movie, it all goes off track. First Apocalypse sends all the world's nuclear weapons into space - a cool sequence... but, we think he is going to use them; use the raw power they comprise. Instead he just throws them into space, so humanity can't use them. Even though he clearly wants to destroy most of the world. Doesn't make sense; it deflates the inflated audience expectations. Next, in the true climactic fight, nobody's motivations are addressed in the least. Magneto changes his mind, and soon after some of the horsemen do, too, but we don't hear why! We hear no reasoning of any kind! It's a fight in which the good guys practically only win the day because most of the bad guys decide to switch sides for no adequately explained reason! It's as if the movie just suspended its storytelling, gave up on all characterization and just relied on nothing but visual spectacle to wow the audience and carry the climax.
Sadly, it doesn't work. Another of the main things that doesn't work is when Jean Grey "phoenixes out". The flame bird looks great and all, but the whole point of that character is that she is transformed by the change - and she wasn't! Not in any way at all! This was really annoying! I was so excited about what she would become now; whether she would break out as Dark Phoenix or at least just Phoenix, but nothing at all happened except amping up her power level. There was no effect on her character. That is almost as disappointing to me as the last time they botched the Phoenix story, namely in X-Men: The Last Stand, where they just had her standing around and doing nothing. WTF?!
X-Men: Apocalypse had too many characters. Storm and Psylocke in particular got hardly any real development; we didn't hear their motivations and except for Storm at the very end, they didn't get a chance to be heroes. Mystique also had very little to do in this movie. She brought news of Magneto's change, and she brought Nightcrawler with her, but she didn't have much else of consequence to do. Her power level was too low to influence the final battle. They should have done more with her, and shown us what connection she had with Stryker, as per the end scene of the previous movie. A lot of the problems with this movie seem to be caused by having had to make it in a damn hurry. They should have waited a year and spent the time working out a better story.
Still and all, with all the action and cool characters, this is still a damn good-looking and entertaining superhero movie. I still rate it an 8 out of 10, even though it's best in the beginning and just gets weaker from then on. A good thing I haven't mentioned yet is the music. I really thought the music worked very, very well in this movie.
X-Men: First Class (2011) was an astonishingly great movie; 10 out of 10. Days of Future Past (2014) was also fantastic; so many great details and a very cool and complex story: 9 out of 10 stars! Sadly, X-Men: Apocalypse is yet another step down from that level; it's a furious chase movie with a weak plot and villains whose motivations aren't explored in any detail, and some of whom (Magneto!) changes allegiance for no apparent reason. Such a shame! I really expected better from Simon Kinberg after the extraordinarily well-made two previous X-Men movies.