A work of incredible spectacle, but lacking in dramatic tension

Rating: 5/10 (19 May 2016)

The strength of this movie certainly relies heavily on the extremely cool looking CGI. We see cities being turned to dust, incredible displays of power from the mutants (especially magneto), and the villain is possible the most powerful we have seen in a Marvel movie so far.
However, due to the nature of this film being another prequel, being set before the days of the original X-men films, I never found myself fearing for the fate of the main characters. We knew that they would live through this. Whilst you could also say the same perhaps for the films X-men: First Class and X-men: Days of future past, somehow those movies carried a little bit more dramatic tension. Perhaps this was due to the fact that in First Class, many of the characters would not later become X-men, so their fates to non-comic book fans was a mystery. In Days of Future Past, the time-line was in schism so the outcome of the movie actually could change the time-line of the original movies (which it did for the better in the end.
In Apocalypse, however, there is no doubt that the cast would survive, although it was at least intriguing to find out how such a powerful villain could be defeated.
This is also quite a simplistic movie- there are no complex morals like "are mutants and humans able to live side by side". The villain motivation ultimately comes down to wanting to rule the world. Speaking of the villain, Apocalypse, he was quite menacing and ruthless, but comes not even an iota within the brilliance of Ian McKellen as Magneto, and his character was no where near as developed which isn't surprising seeing as he came and went within one movie.
So really, to sum up, this movie is a cool looking spectacle, but lacks dramatic tension or any build up, and there is no challenge of morals to the audience. I consider it to be above only the two Wolverine movies in the franchise, but it is my least favourite main time-line X-men movie. Also at almost two and a half hours in run-time, the plot feels incredibly stretched out. The whole sub-plot of being captured by the soldiers felt ultimately pointless.
If you are a true X-men fan, you will probably find some enjoyment from this movie but overall I can't recommend it as I found it quite boring throughout most of it- even the action scenes are quite reminiscent of the "Transformers" Franchise in that it was flashy but lacked great choreography or tension. A lot of the humour also fell quite flat for me, but the other cinema goers laughed so perhaps that's just my sense of humour for you.
Final rating for me is 5/10 - average and takes no risks. In terms of Marvel films recently, it was rather disappointing.