Bryan Singer has made a career with the X-Men franchise up to this point. After the failure of Batman and Robin, studios were not releasing comic book/superhero films for a few years. It looked like the genre had died. That was until X-Men in 2000, as Singer began with the resurrection of the comic book genre with not only a well-reviewed comic book film, but a commercially successful one on top. He followed X-Men up by directing two more X-Men films, culminating with the best work in the franchise and his career, X-Men: Days of Future Past.
With that being said, it was to no one’s surprise that the expectations were high for his 4th installment of the franchise, X-Men: Apocalypse. The film, although entertaining, did not live up to his previous efforts.
The unbalance within the film was the most glaring issue. We are given a long winded overly saturated opening with the origin of Apocalypse. While warranted for the casual filmgoer, the telling of his creation halted the pacing of the film. While needing to know the powers that Apocalypse has, origin narratives of characters in a comic book film should be cut down to a minimum. The audience cares about the now, and concentrating a substantial amount of the opening of the film on Apocalypse might have checked out some of the viewers because on top of being long winded, it was at times sleep inducing and difficult to watch.
Mid-film, the pacing turns to an overabundance of action, that while entertaining felt like it was all thrown at the end, instead of spacing it throughout the film. In between the unbalance of the film shines moments of what has made Singer the ideal director of this franchise. The film’s visual elegance aided in bringing to the screen the 1980’s. Once again, Quick Silver brought a fun, sensational, visually stunning scene in the film to the sounds of “Sweet Dreams” by the Eurythmics.
Additionally, a poignant and emotional punch to the gut were the early scenes with Magneto, who Singer has made into the most sympathetic figure in his latest two entries. Going back to X-men: First Class, you get a full understanding of his disdain for those that are not mutants. Played brilliantly by Michael Fassbender, he has truly made this character his.
While Fassbender provided the best performance in the film, Sophie Turner (Jean Grey), Tye Sheridan (Cyclops), and Kodi Smit McPhee (Night Crawler) stood out as not only the most endearing but my favorite three, with Turner standing out the most. It will be exciting to see where the franchise goes with these characters in the next installment. With nods to fans of the X-Men comic books with easter eggs scattered within the film and in a post credit scene, there is just enough in this film, that warrants a visit to the theater.
Reel Talk gives X-Men:Apocalypse 2.5 Reels
