Review: ‘Apocalypse’ is a good, fun ‘X-Men’ movie but it is not as good as the previous two

Posted on June 10, 2016

By MARK VIOLA

We’ve reached the point that it seems there’s another superhero movie every month. In fact, there’s quite a few people out there who are just sick of them. I’m obviously not one of those, but I have mostly taken the entire thing for granted, even though I do remember a time, however, when getting a good comic book adaptation was a rare event indeed. So maybe that’s why it wasn’t until I was walking into a theater recently and glanced at the “now showing” posters that it hit me we are in a world where the third “Captain America” film and the eighth “X-Men” film–ninth if you include “Deadpool”–are playing at the same time.

Twenty years ago, nobody would have ever predicted that. It was the first “X-Men” film in 2000 that proved you could use modern special effects to recreate the worlds of comic books on the big screen. Unlike the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the X-Men movies have been somewhat more hit or miss, but I would imagine few would argue that director Bryan Singer (“X-Men,” “X2” and “X-Men: Days of Future Past”) has given us three of the best installments, along with “X-Men: First Class,” for which he helped develop the story.

This time he gives us “X-Men: Apocalypse,” building off the stories begun in “First Class,” which brought the action back to the 1960s with a younger Charles Xavier (“James McAvoy”) and Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender), and “Days of Future Past,” set mostly in the 1970s in which much of the previous timeline was rewritten in order to save the day.

The new timeline allows this film, jumping another 10 years into the 1980s, to reintroduce a lot of characters from the original trilogy as their younger versions.
“X-Men: Apocalypse” is a fun, action-filled mutant adventure and fans of the series will surely find plenty to enjoy. That being said, however, this is not nearly as strong an installment as the previous two films, with a few too many storylines making the journey feel a bit cluttered and taking away time from properly developing the central villain. Additionally, some of those storylines, echoing issues already dealt with in early movies, are beginning to grow stale.

This is still a good movie, but after two really good movies, this one can’t help but pale somewhat in comparison.

The film is rated PG-13 for sequences of violence, action and destruction, brief strong language and some suggestive images.

(This is a abbreviated version of the full review available in our printed or e-edition papers.)

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