The X-men just band together to avoid the Apocalypse!

Rating: 8/10 (6 June 2016)

My expectations were low coming into this one so I am happy to report that I was pleasantly surprised by this film. It was not perfect, a Bryan Singer X-men film is never going to be perfect at this point, but it did contain a lot of cool action and quite a few mutants. Sure, I was not happy when I initially saw that Storm, Magneto and Psylocke were three of Apocalypse's horsemen in the film when none of them were in the comics; however, the story of why those three joined worked enough that I am not quite as baffled as I first was. I was disappointed by the fact that Angel was a bit more underutilized again, not sure why they find it so difficult to do him, but he does have more of a part here than in the his other film, X-men: The Last Stand which this film takes a jab at. I thought that was uncalled for, I do not understand why everyone dislikes that one so much as that one still has some of the better action sequences and fight sequences of any of the X-men films. A lot of people have been panning this one too, but as I said, I enjoyed it as I was expecting to dislike it quite a bit more than I did. It did do some things I was not fond of, but for the most part this one delivered for me.
The story brings us back to Egypt where a strange being with great powers is about to transfer his consciousness over to a person who has great healing ability. This process is interrupted by people who tire of this being, claiming he is a false god and they collapse the pyramid. Unfortunately, the false god is not killed, but only locked away in a sleep. Flash years later and we witness a young Scott Summers learning his amazing ability, Mystique still trying to rescue her fellow mutants and Magneto trying to live life as an ordinary man. Things begin to be set in motion; however, and soon Apocalypse has awakened and he immediately takes a young girl who controls the weather under his wing and gives her incredible powers. He also finds a young woman named Psylocke, Angel and Magneto and he begins his plans to destroy the world and create it anew! Only the new students at Xavier's school for the gifted stand in his way of world domination!
Once again, Mystique plays an important role in this film and pretty much aligns with the good guys. Once again, this baffles me as she was never that important in the comic and she never really joined up with the X-men, at least not up to the point I was reading them. They did do a good job of giving Storm and Magneto reasons for joining Apocalypse, but I was kind of disappointed by the way Psylocke was depicted as my mother who had never read the comics assumed that she was a villain in the comics. She is a good guy and though she looks the most like her character than any other character depicted in a Singer film, he managed to make her look too villainous. Nightcrawler was done well and though I still think they do not make Scott as good as he was in the comics he was done better here than the rest of the films. He actually got some good hits in this time! Of course, Quicksilver was once again quick and the most funny of the characters.
So this one was good, could have been better, but I will not complain too much. The film is rated PG-13, but it has to be a pretty hard PG-13 as there were some pretty graphic deaths throughout this one. It would not have taken much more to make it an R. It was nice to have a different villain this time in Apocalypse and from the post credit scene if they do another film it will be another villain in that film as well. Though next up will be the next Wolverine film and after that probably Deadpool before another X-men comes out; granted, Deadpool more than likely does not exist in this universe though his character is owned by Fox too. Not sure how he'd do in one of these films, but I do know he would want to be the one to drop the one F-bomb in a most likely PG-13 X-men film. This one was not perfect, but better than expected so overall I was happy with the result and not mad I dropped money to see it in the theaters.