Better, bigger and cut for kids

Rating: 7/10 (24 July 2016)

I didn't expect much and I didn't get much. As a sci-fi movie it was good; as an X-men movie it felt barely average. Typical villain, the usual back and forth between mutants switching from one side to another, the Stan Lee cameo, the end credits scene. In the end, it didn't feel like anything.
That was its largest flaw: with all the scenes of personal loss, mental torture, mass killing, shootings and evisceration I didn't feel one damn thing. Personal loss was used as a generic token to change someone's behavior in a way that made no sense, the torture and the killing were carefully doctored to show almost no blood and no people that one might feel connected to in any way. Surely we are all used to faceless soldiers dying in droves and even if you know rationally that the New York bridge and the Sydney opera and the entire city of Cairo were full of people, you don't see any bodies, any suffering and the movie makes sure you don't care.
What was the purpose of it all, then, if all your efforts are pushed into CGI and making your audience not care? I know it's Marvel fatigue, but at the same time the movie was simply bland. And not by accident, but on purpose. Enjoy your two hours of heroic clichés and expensive special effects and, while you think of the plot and the characters, imagine you are watching the cartoon. It will help.