Entertaining, but mostly forgettable!

Rating: 6/10 (8 August 2016)

I loved Days of Future Past, despite the puzzled narrative and cloudy second half it was still a hugely entertaining film that I could return to any day. X-Men: Apocalypse however, feels more dull than awesome.
There are some truly great concepts that I'll get to later, but I constantly got this feeling that this film was just padding for this series. They wanted one more film, and so tacked on another unnecessary concept and storyline.
Now, it's great seeing Nightcrawler back after his last appearance in X2, and he once again makes for a cool character, but just like most of the cool characters in this film, he does very little.
That's one of the big problems with this film, the plot is on autopilot. No-one needs to really do anything because the plot's moving along by itself.
Mystique spends the first half of the film running around doing... something that has little relevance to anything really, and Nightcrawler just tags along for most of the story.
Cyclops makes a return, only to again do very little. He only becomes important during the film's climax where he joins the fight against Apocalypse.
Oh boy, let's talk about Apocalypse. He's the bad guy, that's about it. This has to be one of the most boring villains in the series. He wants to destroy everything, simple as. There's no struggle, there's no character whatsoever. He's little more than a plot device.
However there is one character I would like to talk about, and that's the legendary Quicksilver. His introduction at Xavier's academy beats the classic kitchen scene from Days of Future Past 100 times over. It's such an awesome scene.
And I guess I kinder like Jean Grey as well as her telekinetic powers make for some nice scenes. But everyone else feels like they're just along for the ride, and that extends to the villains to.
Apocalypse barely even has to try to convince Angel and Storm to join him, two characters who should've been awesome but just spend their time standing in the background while the real antagonist makes his demands.
Visually, this is a good looking film. The GCI is OK although I dare say they could've been a little more imaginative but it works so I won't go too deep. The make up effects are highly impressive most of the time and nothing stands out to me as looking cheap or unconvincing.
The acting is the best thing about this film. Sophie Turner and Evan Peters are my favourites but everyone is doing their best with what they've been given. Even Lana Condor who, considering this was her first ever acting role, is doing a great job.
Overall, X-Men Apocalypse isn't bad, but it could've been so much more. Unlike most of it's predecessors, the imagination just isn't there. The characters are little more than plot devices, the villains are uninteresting and most of it just feels like the film trying to keep itself going under the weight of strong but badly constructed themes.
The plot is thin, the characters are weak and the whole thing is entirely forgettable, but at least we'll always have the Quicksilver scene.