X-Men: Apocalypse ***½ (2016, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Rose Byrne, Tye Sheridan, Lucas Till, Nicholas Hoult, Evan Peters) – Movie Review

X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) is called Apocalypse, as you see, and that gives a big fat meaty appearance for the impressive villain Apocalypse, played by Oscar Isaac under so much makeup and CGI that it could be anybody. Isaac is a proper actor, and that’s been the series’s modus operandi. Hire proper actors, and they will somehow pull the rabbit out of the hat and do something amazing with their one-note cartoon characters.

With a lot of growling, honking and hooting, Isaac pulls this tricky trick off. He’s a memorable villain! He has to be – he’s the first and most powerful mutant in Marvel’s X-Men universe, awakened after thousands of years to recruit a team of mutants to create a new world order to reign over.

Though X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) is called Apocalypse, as you see, the main character is the younger Professor Charles Xavier, and the top-billed actor is James McAvoy. It’s a huge challenge to find somewhere – anywhere – to go with a second X-Men: Origins story – and it’s a sign of creative frustration that they feel the need to do a second X-Men: Origins story anyway. Moving on, ahead, always to the future, is better with a long-running franchise.

But here they can’t because they want to continue replacing the original X-Men stars with younger models, and because they want to cast trendy middle-ageing actors and young, up-coming stars to make X-Men sexy and current. This game plan is paying off nicely with McAvoy and Michael Fassbender as Magneto at the top of the heap, and a long list of budding stars at the bottom.

So this movie turns out to be X-Men: Xavier – it’s largely his story, and that gives a big fat meaty actual role for proper actor McAvoy, who knows exactly what to do to make the most of it, humanising a previously stuffy role and making it amusing. It help McAvoy that, apart from an occasion need for the Patrick Stewart bald wig, he is acting without makeup and CGI. At any rate, McAvoy is good and keeps the centre solid. He has to be, he has to organise a team of young X-Men to stop their nemesis Apocalypse and save mankind from destruction.

So does Fassbender, who tries everything he knows to act his way out of Magneto, playing it like it is Macbeth, when clearly it isn’t, it’s X-Men. But that’s good too, with Fassbender’s authority only falling apart when he is flying thorough the air, which frankly makes this great actor look silly, or maybe, to be kind, just cartoonish.

But he puts acting wellie into how Magneto is despairing and disheartened after witnessing the death of his wife and daughter, and shows why he has joined the dark side that is Apocalypse. Of course, in the Marvel superhero universe, like our own universe, things change, of course, sometimes, even for the better.

I found Simon Kinberg’s jittery screenplay messy and bitty, especially at the start. As a sequel to prequel, it doesn’t seem to know quite where to focus and is struggling to pull in so many characters and story threads. Eventually, overall, it doesn’t have much of a story, but then that’s not surprising as we’ve been to the well so often that it’s nearly dry.

X-Men: Apocalypse’s whole reason for being is to show us the characters and actors all over again, and that’s fine and dandy, that’s what we’re here for after all, but, without a compelling story, that doesn’t make for a great movie, though it does help to build a good one. To be fair, Kinberg’s dialogue is not bad either.

Director Bryan Singer brings immense flash to his super-slick movie, keeping a much too long film moving incessantly, blazing with dynamism and energy. It is a distracting and eventually mesmerising eye-full. Individual scenes are brilliant, especially Hugh Jackman’s possibly final X-Men cameo as Wolverine and a bewilderingly dazzling surreal sequence set to Annie Lennox’s Sweet Dreams.

Singer relishes the film’s retro 80s setting, which fits in nicely with Marvel’s mood and ethos. Some of the battles are thrilling, some scenes immensely exciting, and all of it looks amazing, a cartoon come to life on the 3D big screen. You couldn’t reasonably ask for more.

In a long list of good, well-chosen actors for a great Marvel X-Men universe team, Rose Byrne as Xavier’s love interest CIA woman Moira Mactaggert, Jennifer Lawrence as Raven / Mystique, Tye Sheridan as Scott Summers / Cyclops, Lucas Till as Alex Summers / Havok, Nicholas Hoult as Hank McCoy / Beast and Evan Peters as Peter Maximoff / Quicksilver make the strongest impression, even hampered by, oh I don’t know, constantly turning blue, going hairy or having to wears dark glasses all the time. It’s a very classy cast of real actors. They do take it very seriously but they do suggest they might be having a little bit of fun too. So, you see, they have got the all-important tone right. Well done, Singer!

I have the feeling that this seventh X-Men movie is a shade better than its predecessor X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) so let’s give it a round of applause and an extra half star. Next up is Jackman’s final bow in the Untitled Wolverine Sequel (2017) and then X-Force.

The main cast are James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Oscar Isaac, Nicholas Hoult, Evan Peters, Olivia Munn, Jennifer Lawrence, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Alexandra Shipp, Sophie Turner, Tye Sheridan, Josh Helman, Lana Condor, Lucas Till and Ben Hardy.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Movie Review

Check out more reviews on derekwinnert.com