Empty Grand Spectacle

Rating: Null/10 (19 May 2016)

Apocalypse is the lamest villain I've ever seen in an X-Men movie, it makes Deadpool from X-Men Origins look subtle. I believe this movie has the Dawn of Justice problem, except probably a little better. People would defend it to how close it looks from the comics, when the argument they would point out is only from the aesthetic. Example: The movie may have Psylocke's look, powers and leotard, however remains cipher that it's close to Batman v Superman's Wonder Woman. The movie throws in a ton of characters and cannot even juggle enough from them, especially when it comes to Jean Grey. She is supposed to be important to the story, but her arc is rushed and her involvement from the climax felt extremely unearned. Fans of the old movies might find the returning young characters such as Cyclops and Nightcrawler fun, but that's only for the sake of familiarity and if this is the first time you've encounter these characters, then you won't find anything remarkable from them. Good performances do help, mostly from Michael Fassbender, even when Magneto here is underwritten as ever, he manages to make a rather contrived sequence quite powerful. But even then, when he starts becoming the villain again, the bombast just compromises every talent on screen.
The movie is heavy on CG, but short on tension. All we see are spectacle, that it gets too exhausting that you're almost like watching a Roland Emmerich movie. It all looks cool, but there is nothing really exciting about it. To be fair, it's still quite watchable and fans might go crazy about its fan service like Wolverine (it's shown in the trailer,) bald Professor X and Mystique wearing her original costume. But even with these aesthetics, it's still pretty empty. These characters are too burdened from the past that it's kind of missing the point.
Oscar Isaac tries, but the role is just too silly to be taken seriously. James McAvoy does his best as Xavier. Tye Sheridan is the best cinematic Scott Summers so far, but that isn't saying much since this franchise never even cared for this character. Michael Fassbender is seriously the only one who can exceed from the film's shortcomings.
Overall, X-Men Apocalypse is pretty to look at, but the lack of enough connection with this rich amount of characters and tension towards the situation and the villain just rob all the fun. It's far from boring, at least. You can find worse ways to kill your two hours, but still, it's like the Mutant Apocalypse game; if you're looking for some action that looks like the comics, then you may have a blast, but movies aren't videogames. There has to be a story to impact the experience. And there is rarely any elements from the story here that actually flow. It's far from a blunder, but X-Men movies have become better than this. This movie is nothing more than a bucket of candies.