Kind of disappointing

Rating: 5/10 (21 May 2016)

I've been looking forward to this movie for quite a while but aside from the teaser from after Days of Future Past, I've kept myself from the trailers, so I went in not really knowing to expect.
What I got was slightly disappointing. I think the movie had the elements of a good movie but it didn't really come together. I think some of its main problems, contributing to this, are:
1) Too many characters. It was great to see many familiar and beloved characters - I love Storm, Nightcrawler, Angel and so on - but the consequence was that they got almost no screen time, especially as Mystique, Xavier, Magneto and Jean Grey/ Scott Summers got a big share each. This gets to the point where I had trouble empathizing with the characters because they had no screen time: Magneto's family? Who gives a hoot, we knew them for like two seconds (the girl's powers were interesting - I was pretty mad they killed her off so quickly for that reason alone). Havok's death? Whatever. It was given little reaction on-screen and while we knew him from former movies, it wasn't like he had tons of focus in those either. To be honest, I just didn't care about the characters in this one.
2) Not striking the balance between what the audience think they want and what they actually want. The worst offender is Mystique- screen time. I like JL fine, I like Mystique fine, but they've really just showed her in there and turned up the screen time even when her part in the story isn't really interesting or meaningful. Many will probably disagree with my other borderline offender: Quicksilver. I love EP as an actor, I love Quicksilver as a character, but he is very powerful in this universe so it feels a bit forced that he doesn't just mow anything and everything down. His role in this also felt a bit forced, evidenced in that it went nowhere in the end. Like with Mystique it feels like it's mostly an audience/ money grab ("the" Quicksilver scene was still the best in the movie, of course, but everything else about his role felt pretty meh).
3) The script felt clumsy at many points. For example, I know we have to introduce characters and the audience have to get to know them in short order, but it felt forced a lot of the time - Jean's introduction got on my nerves especially. Storm's wasn't really any better (in general I think she got an undeserved nerf and we never got to see her use her powers in any awesome way - another issue when there are too many characters. The big ending battle was long but no one really got to shine).
These things combined with things like Apocalypse/ En Sabah Nur spouting off endless clichés and the effects not really being great most of the time (my sister's hypothesis was that the budget was blown on Quicksilver's scene - I'm inclined to agree) ended up giving me a movie that wasn't really BAD, it just wasn't up to the standard that the first two set, making it disappointing.
It had elements of awesomeness but it never came together in the way I wished it would. I would still see it again and will probably see the next one (even though I'm not a big fan of Jean and Scott and this one sets them up to have big roles in the future) but I probably won't see it in the theater as I did with this.
(Also, Sophie Turner is a fine actress, but I could not see her as Jean in this - all I saw was Sansa).