Mediocre

Rating: 4/10 (29 May 2016)

This movie was a disappointment.
I was so excited for this movie. The first trailer gave me chills. I was ready. I was prepared. I was lubricated. And you know what? This movie didn't go down smooth. It was long, rough, overstuffed, and worst of all, boring.
You've seen the trailer. You know that Apocalypse wants to destroy the world. Why? Who knows at this point. There's "false Gods" and "idols" so he'll destroy the Earth "and from the ashes, build a better one!" But where's the real motivation? We've seen the "bad guy wants to destroy the world and make a better one" millions of times before, and seeing it once again was not exciting in the slightest. And Apocalypse wasn't even menacing either. What were his powers? Giving motivational speeches? Seriously, all Apocalypse does is talk and talk and say the exact same things over and over. However, he did have one AWESOME line that had to do with the Tower of Babel, but other than that nothing about his character was memorable or menacing.
And what about the four horsemen? They hardly did a thing. Storm? Did nothing. Angel? Nothing. Psylocke? Nothing. They were recruited, and then dropped until the climatic battle scene at the end of the film. They weren't intimidating at all. Now, the film did a good job of setting them up (except for Psylocke in my opinion, she literally had almost nothing to do at all) but once they were recruited, I don't think they said a word ever again. They just stood there, fought a bit, and that was that.
Now let's talk about Jennifer Lawrence. Please, for the love of God, get another actress. It looked like she wasn't even trying in the role. She looked so incredibly bored, so incredibly dull, that it looks like she was reading her lines directly off of the script. Everyone else at least looked like they were trying, and then Ms. Lawrence comes on screen and all enthusiasm is immediately gone. And I don't hate Jennifer Lawrence. I liked her in First Class a lot, but now it just looks like she doesn't even want to be in these movies anymore.
There were some good things in this film. James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender were absolutely fantastic in every scene they were in. Fassbender especially had a fantastic scene in the woods, and he was about to have a fantastic scene in his place of employment (you'll know it when you see it) that was instead ruined by Apocalypse intruding and ruining the momentum. I do want to say though, that the amount of tragedy that Magneto is now suffering in this series is ridiculous. They need to stop making this character suffer over and over just for the sake of him becoming a villain; at this point it's ludicrous. McAvoy is of course great (I haven't seen him play a bad role yet) and I really hope he continues to play this role well into the future.
Quicksilver returns, and his scene was just as thrilling as it was in DoFP, if a bit longer and a tad drawn out. I liked Sophie Turner as Jean Grey a lot, even if her accent was a bit spotty at times. She really did seem to be bringing her all to the role, and I look forward to watching her in future installments. I also liked how gruesome this movie was for a PG-13 film. There were some bloody, gory parts in here that literally had my jaw hit the floor, as I didn't expect to see some of the things I saw in a PG-13 superhero movie. Also, there is a sequence, that I will not spoil, that includes some very violent and very raw action, that unfortunately takes place in a section of the movie that honestly could've been cut out. The sequence, however, is great.
Overall, this movie was a big disappointment, and I'm sorry to say that. I honestly thought the movie was going to be great, as I absolutely adored the first trailer, but unfortunately it is not. You can't relate or understand where the villains are coming from (except for Magneto), so it's hard for the audience to be invested in them or to care about the stakes. The amount of destruction in this film is almost pornographic, yet there is no impact as all of the carnage is seen from a distance, and not from street level, so the audience feels disconnected to everything that is happening on screen, and in a film that desperately wants its audience to fear its villains and root for its heroes, this is unforgivable, as instead being of thrilled and invested, the audience is bored and detached.