Poor antagonist, flat screenplay and lacks overall innovation, but holds its ground rather loosely with likable familiar characters and epic action sequences

Rating: 6/10 (23 May 2016)

Watching X-Men: Apocalypse got me mired in conflicted thoughts as it keeps blowing hot and cold too frequently. Firstly, when you cast such a charismatic and talented actor like Oscar Isaac - you don't hide him under a thick layer of prosthetics where you neither get to see him nor he can show his acting prowess. Secondly, such an uninteresting character for an antagonist doesn't work if a movie has to rise above the heap of well-written superhero movies. Lastly, one would expect Bryan Singer who is the creator of this universe on the big screen with an experience of creating tense thrillers would come up with such a flat screenplay.
This installment goes right to the start with the emergence of the early mutant through a ritual in ancient Egypt. When this procedure was interrupted by a few rebels, Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac) lies in hibernation for thousands of years and is resurrected by a bunch of modern Egyptians for unknown reasons. Upon waking up, he catches up with the history thus far by inserting his hand inside a television that was playing a news channel - Duh. His modus operandi includes recruiting 4 other mutants and calling them 'The Four Horsemen' - the Biblical reference to bringer of Apocalypse and he goes about recruiting them with neither shortlisting from a potential list of candidates nor verifying their capabilities. They all even gather for a pose with Metallica's 'Four Horsemen' blaring in the background symbolically which was too cheesy.
On the other hand, Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) seems to have mastered his art and removes all of Moira's (Rose Byrne) memories and conveniently puts it back at the end - that's one hell of a memory management. While the Professor is focussing his energies towards making his school for mutants bigger than it is, Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) is hailed as a hero for her efforts in the previous installment in preventing a disaster at the White House and she has a lot of budding mutants looking up to her. Erik (Michael Fassbender) is living a peaceful life and even has a family until an incident provokes him to use his special powers which eventually leads to the death of his family. Apocalypse disturbs this delicate balance of their peaceful co-existence which starts the fight of Good against Evil.
It starts promisingly (not in any spectacular way though) on both the fronts - emergence of the early mutant and meet & greet of the existing mutants but loses the plot midway. First with the negatives - there is no edge-of-the-seat screenplay which was a marquee element of the first 2 installments of the prequel series, the visual effects though ambitious - lacks the finishing it requires (where some explosions look like they are straight from the 90s action movies), the spectacular Quicksilver (Evan Peters) show from 'The Days of Future Past' is disintegrated into an insensitive and uninteresting romp. Even after having reality expectations that is apt for a comic book remake, it gets too silly and childish many a times without the cheeky factor. Even the cameo by Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is so muddled that I wish it wasn't there. The inexplicable need to destroy infrastructure or killing innocent civilians or police personnel without leading to a conscious consequence never grows into a solid drama.
It does have some bright spots though, especially the refreshing character of Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee), great character development for Raven, subdued performance by Michael Fassbender, ambitious visual effects and an epic background score. GoT fans get to see a powerful and independent Sansa (as Jean Grey (played by Sophie Turner)) who isn't short of attitude as well. It does seem to have reintroduced the origins of most characters which completes the cycle to merge the two trilogies.
Poor antagonist, flat screenplay and lacks overall innovation, but holds its ground rather loosely with likable familiar characters and epic action sequences.