Cursed For Being a Prequel

Rating: 5/10 (11 June 2016)

Here's what I think in a nutshell: eh. blah. sigh. It's alright. I think this for three reasons split below:
The Characters:
The new characters introduced were: Psylocke (Olivia Munn), Angel (Ben Hardy), Storm (Alexandra Shipp) NightCrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee), Cyclops (Tye Sheridan), and Jean Grey (Sophie Turner). That's a ton of new characters, but not really when you consider all but one were in the original trilogy. So really it's just seeing younger versions of old characters. I would have to say that if I had to pick one of them to be the best–AKA, left the best impression–it would have to be McPhee's NightCrawler, with Turner's Jean coming in second. I remember reading comments prior to seeing this film that said Munn had turned down the female lead in Deadpool because she didn't want to be a damsel, and she was excited about this film because she got to be kick-ass. Perhaps the kick-ass is in the deleted scenes? I think Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow is more kick-ass, and she doesn't have any powers! To be frank, they took an extremely strong actress and gave her a strong mutant, but made her a mundane character. Turner's Jean Grey was good, but since I was never the biggest Jean Grey fan there wasn't much there for me. Sorry, but how Jean Grey ends makes me really hate her, and this film has a lot of references to The Phoenix, so I kept cringing and the voices in my head kept shouting "YOU'RE DOOMED!" So that pretty much ruined any chance of me getting real excited for this new Jean Grey. I also have to just say that Moira's (Rose Byrne) return is kind of pointless to me. I thought she was a useless character whose sole purpose was to bridge the gap between Apocalypse's return and the X-Men finding out about it. Otherwise she flies the ship. Oh, and of course, I can't forget that Hugh Jackman's Wolverine is backagainas usual. I know, you can all hate me, but I just feel like he doesn't have to be in every single freaking X- Men film.
The Villain I get that a person with powers who has a god complex is not an original villain. That being said, I still expected so much more. The first third of the film is slow as Apocalypse is going around collecting his followers. However, I feel like aside from Magneto, he just picks the first three mutants he finds. When he's actually supposed to pick the four most powerful mutants. Yes, Storm is powerful, but not in this film. In this film Apocalypse has two petulant teenagers, a man struggling with his past and present, and a woman whose sole purpose is to be another female character. On the plus side he does help Magneto see the extent of his powers–finding the metal in the Earth so that he could actually level cities–is pretty cool. Aside from that all he seems to do is change people's appearance. He's a stylist. Psylocke wears this coat with a ponytail, after Apocalypse she's wearing a swimsuit with her hair flowing behind her. Apocalypse turns Storm's hair white and Angel gets a haircut (and Apocalypse is apparently responsible for the Professor's baldness), so really Apocalypse is just a glorified barber. Everyone keeps saying how this guy is the most powerful mutant ever, but all I see him do is create portals and amplify other's powers, so I think they didn't do him justice. I know, I sound mean, but when we've had so many villains, and when this film takes one of the most cliché villains–though it's cliché simply because it's a classic–I am going to be more critical of it. I think Apocalypse's most significant scene is actually his foreshadowing of Jean Grey's Phoenix. I cannot go into more details without spoilers of the film, but let's just say that it is blatantly obvious in the final showdown for anyone who saw X-Men: Last Stand. I mean it's like a freaking neon Las Vegas sign.
The Curse of the Prequel I saw this film with my mother, who forgot that technically this film and the two before it are really just prequels to the original trilogy. Therefore, most of the references to the original trilogy that take over about 1/3 of the film are overwhelming. The original trilogy is great, the prequel/first film is great, and the second and third in the prequel series start to fade. Sound familiar? I think this is better known as the Star Wars Curse. The film is burdened with wrapping up the prequel characters' stories, while introducing the characters that we all knew from the first trilogy. However, because this is X-Men and there are too many characters, it does not do a good job of either. Mystique is too minor a character for how major she was in the first two, and then there's Magneto and the Professor who are really just there to be the two pillars of the X-Men universe. The film's focal points are the teenage mutants who are the main characters in the original trilogy. Though this film's teenage hero prequel is not as disastrous as the Fantastic Four version, it's still just OK. I was also reading on IMDb.com that part of the goal is to possibly create another X-Men film using the "X-Men team" that is created at the end of this film. We're given the teenage X-Men: Cyclops, NightCrawler, Jean, and Storm. And as we can remember, Storm, Cyclops, and Jean are the X-Men in the first film from the late 90s. If that movie gets made I'm likely going to see it, but I am not sure if I'm looking forward to another set of X-Men films that are still technically a prequel.