Directed by: Bryan Singer
Written by: Simon Kinberg (screenplay) & Bryan Singer, Simon Kinberg, Michael Dougherty & Dan Harris (story)
The world's first mutant En Sabah Nur (Oscar Isaac) awakens, and wants to cleanse the world by destroying it first and letting the strong survive. The X-Men must stand united against En Sabah Nur and his four horsemen of apocalypse - who include some very familiar faces.
X-Men: Apocalypse was what I hoped it to be! While I haven't read what the (professional) critics have written about the film (and to be fair, I don't care) opinions and reviews from the fans have been extremely positive. There's been a lot of implying that Jean Grey's scene at the end is better than the whole Avengers franchise, or that Logan's cameo is better than the whole Avengers franchise. I can't help but agree!
X-Men: Apocalypse is taken to some pretty epic levels, yet it seems effortless. The X-Men franchise is full of amazing, intriguing stories, and I don't think the writers have to dig too deep to find a story hey can make as epic as Apocalypse. Think about Days Of Future Past. X-Men manages to make these kind of stories while Avengers franchise seems to be slowly building to some kind of really epic movie, and that process is infuriatingly slow. Pick up the pace, Marvel!
The writing is as good as it tends to be in superhero movies. There are few moments where the thrill is built up so well it takes your breath away. For example, when Scott Summers' abilities activate. You know exactly what's going to happen but you really feel how intense the scene is. It's just fabulous. The plot itself is decent. The greatest thing is the villain, because he seems impossible to beat, which gives it even more thrill.
Of course typical plot devices are used, like the antagonist team gets one from the good side and is about to use him in their diabolical plot, just like in X2, but even though that is extremely familiar trope to those who have been following X-Men since the beginning, all of us worry so much for the character - unless you are heartless and don't understand why hurting him or using him is horrible.
Is there something I don't like about this movie? The dialogue was sometimes extremely clumsy, especially when Charles Xavier first mentioned Moira. That kind of clumsy "schoolboy with a crush" dialogue would not suit sir Patrick Stewart, which makes it sound a little tacky. Also bringing back Moira was amazing, but it seems like the writers tried to make it seem like "yup, professor X is straight and nothing's going on between him and Erik". Whoops. that didn't work: their chemistry is too good. But I have to say my biggest annoyance in the film is this: there are a few characters that I thought seemed cool: they are new, and they have a lot of potential. But nope, they were killed to make another character develop again. I don't think creating new characters only to kill them is a good way to go. Even I can think of other ways. What if he had lived alone, humans realised who he was the same way, and tried to capture him, being more brutal, so he'd see that oh yeah, humans are still that bad. I just didn't see the need to introduce us to new characters and have them killed five minutes later.
Usually it's annoying when X-Men franchise brings in new mutants and it's hard to keep a track of them. That has happened in, like, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and in the future of Days Of Future Past. Apocalypse gives us new mutants, except they aren't new. Scott Summers is back, so is Jean Grey, Kurt Wagner, Angel and Storm. Now we haven't seen all the new characters in movies before, but they are still familiar from comics, like Jubilee and Psylocke.
Tye Sheridan, Sophie Turner Kodi Smit-McPhee and Alexandra Shipp are phenomenal in their roles, some of them are better than the original adult actors, and I look forward seeing them in the possible next X-Men movies. Most of the old actors and actresses are just as good as they've always been. James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender can't really compete with Stewart and McKellen, but they are extremely talented and good choices. Evan Peters makes this movie so much more delightful as Quicksilver. Avengers couldn't compete with their Quicksilver, Evan Peters is charming and so is his character. Oscar Isaac was fearsome and amazing as En Sabah Nur, but he has the problem many people in CGI filled superhero movies have: their face is covered up with all that technology. I like seeing the faces of actors and actresses, that tells a lot about their skills, but CGI is slowly killing this.
True, I don't really like CGI much anyway, but I think this film is 80 % CGI. They couldn't do most of that stuff without it, so I don't think I can complain.
X-Men: Apocalypse pulled me back to the fiery pits of X-Men hell. This movie has everything I love about X-Men movies, apart from ethical questions. In X-Men Apocalypse you can't choose sides, because who would be on the side of a guy who wants to destroy the world? The X-Men movies tend to have several categories for villains, but at least this time the villain wasn't a human being who hated mutants, like Stryker in X2 and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Apocalypse is closer to Sebastian Shaw: a mutant whose goal seems to be to genocide but let the strong individuals live.
X-Men: Apocalypse is intense in the perfect way, epic because of the story and the villain, and simply amazing. While there were less than perfect moments worth a good eye-rolling, as a whole this movie was astonishing. This film is the reason why I will always prefer X-Men over any other superhero franchise.
☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
8 / 10
To be fair I think the score might be different if I had my notebook with me. It would've been easier to say what wasn't too good about this film, but without the details I only remember the big picture, and I loved that.
No comments:
Post a Comment