Impressive action and great visuals but a repetitive story and trite characters

Rating: 5/10 (6 November 2016)

X-men: Apocalypse tells the story of an invincible mutant hell-bent on ending humanity, while the same mutants who are derided by humans band together to take him down. We have seen this story before, it is the ninth movie in the X-men saga and the fourth X-men movie directed by Bryan Singer, so naturally there is bound to be some repetition in terms of character motivations, villain establishing and action set pieces. However this movie will take every single one of the aforementioned details and drain the life out of the characters and use excessive amounts of CGI.
X-men: Apocalypse will take the younger version of the mutants established in the original trilogy and put them in higher stakes. For the most part, the young mutants do a good job portraying outcasts of society, especially Nightcrawler (McPhee), Jean Grey, (Turner), Cyclops (Sheriden) and Storm (Shipp). While the older cast portrays their counterparts well, without doing a whole lot new. Professor X (McAvoy), Magneto (Fassbender) and Mystique (Lawrence) are very talented actors but their performances were not anything special in this movie, no new ground was really broken for them or their characters. As i previously elduded, a sequel in a series will tend to repeat actions from their predecessor and try to go bigger, and do they ever go bigger by threatening our heroes with an omnipotent, yet clichéd villain with vague motivations and terrible CGI makeup. This movie was made by the same studio that made the truly awful Fantastic Four reboot, so it was not very surprising in how X-men: Apocalypse will make the same mistakes in terms of its third act set up and villain fight scenes, however I did expect more from the man that made 3 good X-men movies and the Usual Suspects, Bryan Singer.
Again this movie was directed by Bryan Singer, and other than the look of Apocalypse and a few very obvious green screen backgrounds where practical effects would have sufficed, he does direct a lot of action set pieces very well. In particular two Quicksilver montages and a scene in the woods that gives Magneto's character more depth. Which is something I am tired of throughout the franchise, we know Magneto's backstory and his revenge plot in First Class, he keeps switching loyalties. His motivations are clear, but his constant shifts in morality have grown tiresome to the point where Fassbender does seem to be conveying too much emotion during the final fight scene. Magneto's choices are dictated merely through the actor raising his arms up and him floating in the sky. It is essentially what you would expect a villain to do before a change of heart.
Anyone expecting an X-men movie will get an X-men movie. It a watchable blockbuster movie that is fun to watch and engages you in its action sequences. Anyone expecting more than that will not walk away satisfied at the experience. In age where every fifth or sixth movie released is a superhero flick, this one does not stand out. It even acknowledges its repetitiveness in its ending dialogue. I do recognize that X-men Apocalypse was not trying to be original, it is an adaptation of a comic book after all, however it should at least try to throw in some new ideas into an ever expanding universe.