X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

Rating: 5/10 (5 June 2016)

This seems to be the year of superheroes vs superheroes with DC and Marvel releasing their tentpoles, Batman v Superman and Civil War, and now Fox has released one for the X-Men with the lackluster X- Men: Apocalypse. In Apocalypse, the world's first and most powerful mutant, aptly named Apocalypse, has woken up from a slumber after thousands of years to find that society is not revering him as a god as they used to. Apocalypse throws a tantrum and assembles a team of four mutants to destroy modern civilization and create a new world order. As the fate of the world hangs in the balance, Mystique and Professor X assemble a new team of young mutants to save mankind. It seemed like having God and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse be the villains would make the movie at least somewhat interesting, but, really they don't do anything for a majority of the 144 minute running time. For most of Apocalypse's story, he's just assembling his team while the Horsemen he's already recruited just sit around while he convinces another mutant to join the group. That's not only an issue with the Horsemen, unfortunately. Almost all of the other mutants, Mystique, Professor X, Nightcrawler, Jean Grey, etc, wait around until something bad happens. There's a ton of interesting characters in this film that aren't given anything interesting to do. Almost all of the mutants spend the entire movie feeling sorry for themselves, and there's really no good action until the very end. Even the final fight scene gets underwhelming at certain points. At times, I felt like I was watching a bad Roland Emmerich disaster flick. One positive is that Evan Peters steals every scene as Quicksilver, giving a great personality to the character. He was the one thing I wholeheartedly enjoyed about the movie. X-Men: Apocalypse has a couple moments of visual flair, some decent action and clear ambition, but its muddled plot and bland characterizations make it a disappointing misstep.