Underwhelming

Rating: 5/10 (16 September 2016)

After the excellent First Class and the convoluted but extremely entertaining days of Future Past, I was all ready to like Apocalypse, but unfortunately, this wasn't what I hoped it would be.
Oscar Isaac gives a great performance as Apocalypse, but the writing for the character is so bad that it brings it down. For all his powers, Apocalypse in the end acts as any James Bond villain who takes his sweet time and suffers from hubris excess that allows him to be defeated. It was cliché, conventional and disappointing. Just as well, him recruiting his horsemen (and how he chose them...) wasn't well explained nor developed, and it was extremely disappointing to see Storm and Psylocke be reduced to cartoon villains.
On the subject of the new kids, they were also severely underused. I wanted to see more of the newcomers: Cyclops, Jubilee and Nightwatcher, and, as much as I like Jean Grey, I felt like she was the only member of the new cast that had a real focus, which is a pity.
As for Pr X, Magneto, I felt like this entry didn't provide anything new in their relationship and was retreading subjects and themes that were developed far better in FC and DoFP. In particular, Magneto's story with his wife and kid was so stereotypical could could tell what was coming the first scene you saw them together. and it is a real pity when you have actors like Fassbender and McAvoy at your disposal to only count on their talent to make a poor script and clunky dialogues work.
Mystique's character was so twisted to fit Jenifer Lawrence wishes that in the end she made not much sense, unfortunately.
Wolverine's cameo was pretty useless.
Some visuals, like the Auschwitz or the Quicksilver scenes were enjoyable though.
The movie thus feels like a pretty generic mess full of missed opportunity, terribly cliché, overloaded by a bloated cast, and quite forgettable