sweet dreams are not made of this

Rating: 4/10 (29 May 2016)

X-Men: Apocalypse, where we get the X-Men another full ten years later (also still have barely aged a day since First Class, but whatever, movie), and now the stakes are GLOBAL! It's time for a blue-skinned Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Movie villain steps up to bat to take over everything to "cleanse" humanity, and take on his four horsemen/women for this apocalypse while the X-Men sort of race to stop him (I say sort of since they get captured at one point).
This movie is... a movie, that exists. It's the textbook definition of an "eh" experience. I didn't hate it, there's actors in it still trying and working their butts off to dig deep into characters they've been in for three movies now (McAvoy and Fassbender come off best, Lawrence is sometimes in it and sometimes not), and there's new people (Sophie Turner for one) who are trying as well. But what they're given is... minuscule, too little, and too undercooked. This is the kind of movie that features both Beethoven's 7th symphony/2nd movement and it made me think of the Nic Cage flick Knowing and how *that* used the song better (which wasn't much at all), and then uses at another point Metallica's "Four Horsemen" because, hey, title!
These may sound like small points, but they're what I latched on to while watching this. It's a plot that is both stupid and rehashed not only from other X-Men movies but from other movies in general. The End of the World OMG scenario doesn't cut it anymore (not that Fox will stop if Independence Day 2 is any indication, but I digress). And unlike the previous two films which were rich in character and motivation and using the period they're set in - 62 and 73, the height of Cuba and Nixon - there's not much here to distinguish it from the 80's aside from the obvious Thriller jacket and Star Wars reference (which is so out of place I'd wish that Kevin Smith could come and smack Singer across the face).
Here's my analogy for X-Men: Apocalypse: if you're the kind of person who likes to go to Burger King, and you haven't had a Whopper in a little while and you go to the local Burger King and get a Whopper that's been sitting around for half an hour - so it's not inedible for it's not cooked fresh - and you eat it and go "Well, it's a Whopper," and don't ask them to cook you a fresh one and take what you've received and don't ask for anything else... well, you might be fine with this movie. But it's the textbook definition of a movie with a ton of great actors without a good story.
Also, if you happen to love Oscar Isaac as he's one of the most magnetic personalities in American film right now... this is a stunning low for him as a character to play. He has NOTHING here, compared to this Poe Dameron in Star Wars is Michael Corleone as far as complexity goes.