Progressively Harder To Pose a Credible Threat to Superheroes

Rating: 7/10 (27 May 2016)

Stop me if you've heard this one before. A single humanoid with immense powers wants to wreak global death and destruction just because he can. No, that was Avengers: Age of Ultron.
*beep*
2 evenly matched groups of nominal heroes with a wide variety of super-human powers duke it out over some arcane movie-mcguffin dispute. No, that was Captain America: Civil War.
*beep*
Regular human beings stand by helplessly as their buildings are toppled, cities exploded, and fellow citizens slautered by the tens of thousands during a pissing match between 2 supposed good guys. No, that was Batman v. Superman.
*beep*
We know from long experience that superheroes always defeat supervillains, so where's the fun in that? It's finally reached the point of detachment wherein the only credible danger that a superhero can face is another superhero — or possibly a god.*
So it is here. The god in question started off in Egypt 5600 years ago as a regular mutant (named En Sabah Nur {not that anyone cares}, portrayed by Oscar Isaac, better known as Poe Dameron from the recent Star Wars movie), but his particular power was the ability to transfer himself into the bodies of others, including other mutants. Every time he did so, he added their abilities to his own and eventually came to dominate the civilization of the Nile. But in his arrogance he was viewed by the common people as a false god, and a conspiracy among his own palace guard resulted in his being buried under a collapsed pyramid during a period of vulnerability as he was again changing bodies.
Fast forward to the Reagan Era, when a CIA agent accidentally opens the ancient crypt, and empowering sunlight falls on the arcane runes which will reanimate the dormant deity. He spends some time strolling around Cairo, taking in the sights of the modern era, before recruiting 4 mutants to be his henchoids, the 4 "horsemen" to his Apocalypse. One of them is the grieving and misanthropic Magneto / Erik Lensherr (Michael Fassbender, who will grow up to be Ian McKellen). Another is weathermeister Storm (Alexandra Shipp, who will eventually become Halle Berry). And there's Angel (Ben Hardy) and Psylocke (Olivia Munn, who will grow up to be Mrs. Aaron Rodgers). His come-on to all of them is that he can enhance their nascent powers into something truly formidable.
Standing in the way of his plan of world destruction / domination are the students at the School for Gifted Youngsters run by Prof. Charles Xavier (James McAvoy, wwgu2B Patrick Stewart). And it turns out that Prof. X himself has the one superpower that Apocalypse covets most of all: the ability to reach into the mind of every human on Earth.
Truly gargantuan quantities of wanton destruction ensue.** These are well done, as the various FX subcontractors dominate the film. There's some pro-forma dialog, but hardly anybody gets a chance to truly act.
Much of this film makes sense only if you've seen the previous ones in the X-Men series. Which I have. And I'm a comic-book fan. So I still liked it. YMMV.
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*Altho see the wry observation: "Captain America met 2 gods face to face; still a Christian. Iron Man met 2 gods face to face; still an atheist. The Hulk met 2 gods face to face; kicked the snot out of both of them." (except he didn't say "snot")
**Why can't we ever have superheroes whose skill sets involve building things? Instead, the new kid in school is Scott Summers, whose only ability is to blast the living crap out of everything he aims his laser-beam eyes at.