“Another week, another superhero movie. Or at least that’s how it seems lately. It does feel particularly soon after Days of Future Past to have the next installment, but I love my X-Men so I won’t complain. I will admit to being a bit fuzzy on Past events (so many heroes and storylines to keep track of). Still, except for a few moments of pause while I tried to remember, it didn’t really detract.
Cutting right to the chase, my reaction to apocalypse is positive but slightly hesitant. As far as entertainment value goes, my most important grading criteria, certainly high marks. But after the recent awesome of their Marvel brethren in Civil War and Deadpool, I can’t help thinking that this could have been even better.
I think one of Apocalypse’s (the movie, not the baddie) greatest strengths is also its greatest weakness, and that being the sprawling cast of characters. It’s always exciting seeing new mutants added (Psylocke!) or returned (Nightcrawler!) to the mix. But when you have too many (without even going into the timeline confusion) some end up being underserved. I was particularly excited to see Psylocke since I’d been intrigued by her since I acquired her trading card in 4th grade (let’s not talk about how badly I mispronounced her name at the time). Add in Olivia Munn, and she’s prolly what I was most looking forward to. And then she didn’t do a whole lot. Minimal story. Hardly even sure what her powers are. She could have been anyone throwing in as horseman #3. Pre-Civil War I would have just shrugged it off, but now that we know that a sprawling cast can be well managed, I now expect better.
Still, X-Men have always been favorites. And while with Avengers I’m excited to learn about characters that are new to me, with these guys I’m excited to see characters I’ve known for a long time. On that front, it always delivers (yay Tye Sheridan stepping in as Cyclops). Oh and points for Evan Peter’s Quicksilver running away very very quickly with the movie again. Maybe not as surprising and unexpected as last time, but still very much welcome. Fun fact, his 3ish minute speed sequence required more time filming than any other part of the movie. Kinda ironic.
Yeah so coulda been better, or it coulda been BvS, so we still win.
X-Men: Apocalypse – \m/ \m/ \m/ \n”