"A gift can often be a curse."

Rating: 8/10 (2 April 2017)

Anyone else wondering how a planet threatening entity like Apocalypse would be no larger than the average human/mutant that's part of his team? Maybe I've been conditioned by too many comic book covers, but I thought Apocalypse would be some Incredible Hulk sized behemoth. Seeing him along side Magneto, Storm, Psylocke and Angel, I almost had to laugh; where was the sheer, awesome, powerful fear his character should have generated?
Well this one got by me somehow when it landed in the theaters last year, I'm still scratching my head over that. In general, I didn't think the film was too bad, not being a Marvel comics fan myself. One of the things I look for in a Marvel flick is the ubiquitous cameo appearance by creator and writer Stan Lee, and he didn't let me down. Lee is in a scene where he watches the launch of the nuclear missiles by Apocalypse, so his X-Men string of appearances remains unbroken. You know, the guy just turned ninety four his last birthday!! No pun intended, but the man is a marvel himself.
The story here is packed with characters and I didn't have too much trouble keeping track of who's who. The stand out scene once again involved the Quicksilver (Evan Peters) mutant doing the Matrix-style save of fellow students during the destruction of Xavier's school. The only thing missing this time around was a catchy tune to go along with it, like the 'Time in a Bottle' number from "Days of Future Past".
Having seen the 'Logan' movie a couple weeks ago, it seemed to me that Hugh Jackman might have been hanging up his Wolvie gig, but the after credits scene here seemed to suggest otherwise. I guess we'll have to wait and see, but it sure would seem to confuse the non-comic fan movie goer.