As a Singer Fan This Was a Tough One to Swallow

Rating: 3/10 (5 June 2016)

I've always thought Bryan Singer's X Men films were not just the best of the X Men franchise but also the best of the entire superhero genre as there was always something more intelligent going on with them. The mutant struggle for equal rights perfectly parallels the prior Civil Rights movement and the differing approaches on how to achieve equality shined in the lead characters of Xavier and Magneto. Xavier representing the path of diplomacy and peace like Martin Luther King and Magneto going the more forceful path like Malcolm X. When Singer left the franchise I had never been more let down by any film as I had been by Last Stand as all that was smart about the series was traded off for a generic action film with the team needing to defeat an all powerful mutant who was poorly developed and hardly used in the film. Of course Singer's return seemed to undo all this with the excellent Days of Future Past and it seemed like the series could move forward in a very positive way. Unfortunately I would go as far as to say that Apocalypse somehow managed to be much worse than Last Stand. The main reason being that Apocalypse himself is a very flat character devoid of any motivation for destroying the world and nowhere near as menacing as the version of Apocalypse from the 90's cartoon. The story also jumps all over the place between different characters without developing any sense of rhythm for story progression and I constantly found myself just wanting the film to get to the big dumb ending it was building towards just to get it over. The dialogue is very corny in many parts and it's nearly impossible to root for any of these characters played by these new adolescent actors. Worst of all, the complex friendship between Magneto and Xavier which was the driving force of all the films is completely absent and all we have is a special effects extravaganza of super mutants duking it out over a world ending event which we never feel invested in. At this point I don't know what the series can do to correct itself again and if Bryan Singer does not come back I don't think that would be so bad because he has clearly checked out with this latest attempt.