The Critics are way Wrong! "Apocalypse" Delivers

Rating: 8/10 (9 June 2016)

The 8th installment of the X-men franchise (excluding "Deadpool") blasts off with this big-budgeted extravaganza featuring the long awaited super-villain Apocalypse. After the huge success of "Days of Future Past," Bryan Singer gets another go at the franchise. The film successfully captures the spectacle, humor, heart, and awesomeness that filmgoers have come to expect from the X-men franchise further solidifying that Bryan Singer is THE MAN to direct the X-men movies.
When "X-men: Apocalypse" was prescreened it became bombarded with negative reviews -- leaving many (myself included) skeptical of the film's potential. Though what critics do not seem to get is that yes, "Apocalypse" is flawed, although it still thoroughly entertained its audience from start to finish with awesome super-powered set pieces, thrilling action, delightful comic relief and cool cameos of beloved characters.
The production team and the writers really made this film work. The performances were great from a very young and likable cast. The special effects were solid yet did rely a bit too much on CGI. The action was thrilling and provided audiences with tension through the threat of character deaths and other calamities present unlike in "Civil War" where there was not much tension in the action (albeit still cool) because most of the fights took place between friends who we knew would never kill each other. The humor was sporadic yet still funny. X-men always makes great use of their one f-word limit. Finally the nuke scene with the subtle touch of Beethoven and the Quicksilver scene with the Eurythmics' 'Sweet Dreams' were just simply exquisite.
Now Apocalypse did have flaws. There is no denying that. The timeline still has inconsistencies and continuity errors. While watching Apocalypse the average moviegoer probably will spend a good amount of time figuring out if the years and ages line up correctly. Like no way Nicholas Hoult looks twenty years older than he did in "First Class." Rottentomatoes went so far to call Apocalypse (the villain) cliché. Which is partially true because he wanted to destroy the world; which is what every super-villain wants to do nowadays! Also another review on IMDb said that all the X-men team up to defeat Apocalypse (the villain) by combining their powers in a Fant4stic kind of way. That is very true and the scene did seem like a bland and anticlimactic approach to kill off the big bad Apocalypse. Also since X-men is known for having an abundance of superheroes present: giving each one sufficient development is a task too difficult. Given this, certain characters had no development or little to do like Storm, Angel, Jubilee, and Psylocke -- whose only purpose for being there was to make teenaged boys lose their sh...
In a nutshell "X-men: Apocalypse" is another good addition to the X-men franchise that will continue to propel it forward in more ways than one. The production team did a great good of integrating action, emotional depth, resonant themes, and humor into a seamless whole. Hopefully the studio will keep Bryan Singer at the director's chair and if they even think about getting a new director, they just need to be reminded that the only good X-men movies came from him.