X-MEN: APOCALYPSE (2016) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

x-men: apocalypse (2016) movie

Genre               |   Science Fiction

Classification   |   M

Running time   |   144 minutes

Released         |   19 May 2016

cast

James McAvoy ... Charles
Michael Fassbender ... Erik
Jennifer Lawrence ... Raven
Nicholas Hoult ... Hank McCoy
Oscar Isaac ... En Sabah Nur 
Evan Peters ... Peter Maximoff

director

Bryan Singer

writer

Simon Kinberg ... (screenplay by)
 
Bryan Singer ... (story by) &
Simon Kinberg ... (story by) &
Michael Dougherty ... (story by) &
Dan Harris ... (story by)
 
Jack Kirby ... (based on characters created by) (uncredited)
Stan Lee ... (based on characters created by) (uncredited)

cinematographer

​Newton Thomas Sigel

music

John Ottman

film editor

Michael Louis Hill
John Ottman

---

box office result

Worldwide             $543,934,787  ​  

Australia                 $​​​​11,392,143

North America        $​388,492,298 ​

---

the best dialogue

Erik Lensherr: [sees Apocalypse for the first time] Who the fuck are you?

Apocalypse: You betray me?
Magneto: No. I betrayed them.
[attacks Apocalypse]

Hank McCoy: You wanna go see Moira.
Charles Xavier: I wanna go check her out- check out... the situation.
[clears throat]

---

X-MEN: APOCALYPSE (2016) IMAGES

Images

Posters

Images

Posters

X-MEN: APOCALYPSE (2016) STORY SYNOPSIS

​Since the dawn of civilization, he was worshiped as a god. Apocalypse, the first and most powerful mutant from Marvel's X-Men universe, amassed the powers of many other mutants, becoming immortal and invincible. Upon awakening after thousands of years, he is disillusioned with the world as he finds it and recruits a team of powerful mutants, including a disheartened Magneto, to cleanse mankind and create a new world order, over which he will reign. As the fate of the Earth hangs in the balance, Raven with the help of Professor X must lead a team of young X-Men to stop their greatest nemesis and save mankind from complete destruction.

X-MEN: APOCALYPSE (2016) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 18 May 2016
​Pop Movee Rating ⭐⭐⭐

X-MEN: APOCALYPSE may be the “biggest” film the Mutant Superhero franchise has yet produced, but there is, dare it be said, a certain ‘X’ factor missing from this latest installment and, as a result, Director Bryan Singer’s new entry fails to capitalise on wonderful mythology reset achieved by its predecessor, DAYS OF FUTURE PAST, in 2014.

The film has two flaws; neither of which are fatal and will concerns fans far more than casual movie-goers. APOCALYPSE is hampered largely by its titular villain, played by Oscar Isaac, who comes across as lacking any genuine depth and feels more like a plot device that has been contrived to bring the X-MEN universe to a point in its existence that is much closer to where Bryan Singer started the series with his first X-MEN movie back in 2000. By moving the timeline, and by default the characters, closer to the events of the original movie the second flaw emerges and Apocalypse falls into the classic prequel conundrum: the audience know how this is going to end before the characters do!

As suggested by the post-credit sequence from DAYS OF FUTURE PAST, APOCALYPSE opens in Ancient Egypt, were the population have fallen under the control of the first Mutant, En Sabah Nur. While undergoing a kind of consciousness transference procedure, from one Mutant body to another, his guards spring a plan to bring an end to his tyranny by collapsing his pyramid upon the supreme Mutant and his four henchmen. Things don’t go quite to plan (as might be expected in this kind of a film) and the villain is saved by the sacrifice of all of those around him; allowing the transference process to be completed and take a new human form that looks very much like Oscar Isaac!

This elaborate prologue sets the stage for what is to come, but the movie digresses for some time in an effort to introduce all of the new actors into familiar characters and to catch-up with the FIRST CLASS (2011) team in James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender and Nicholas Hoult. McAvoy and Fassbender manage to bring a degree of gravitas to their roles; establishing once-and-for-all that they will always be frenemies. Lawrence, however, turns in a rather flat performance that sells Mystique short and is a rare miss for the young actress.

The next generation of X-Men are introduced with a varying degree of success. Kodi Smit-McPhee as Nightcrawler and Alexandra Shipp as Storm are the most natural, but Singer spends more than a fair amount of time working through the opening scenes for both Tye Sheridan as Cyclops and Sophie Turner as Jean Grey. Other characters also find their way into the story, including Angel (Ben Hardy), Havok (Lucas Till), Jubilee (Lana Condor) and Psylocke (Olivia Munn).

While each of these characters has a “moment” or two throughout the movie, there is a feeling that the film’s producers are saving these characters for a later date and they appear in APOCALYPSE so that audiences are familiar with them in a future X-MEN cinematic outing. The biggest winner, in terms of screen time, is Evan Peters, who plays Quicksilver. While the character was a fleeting highlight in DAYS OF FUTURE PAST, Peters gets to expand upon his kooky repertoire with far more scenes in APOCALYPSE. That said, Simon Kinberg’s script badly mishandles a pivotal moment for the character on film’s finale that would have made a great deal of sense in terms of another character’s motivation and provide justification for what they do at such a late stage in proceedings. (That comment may seem a tad oblique now, but it will when you see the film…)

X-MEN: APOCALYPSE satisfies in the sense that all sequels/prequels/continuing stories do; that is, to provide the franchise’s broad fan base with an ongoing adventure that sees everyone’s favourite characters back one more time. Where Apocalypse fails to capitalise is in the delivery of a story that sidesteps the comic book genre’s standard tropes and delivers a follow-up that could have provided new character arcs that were different to the film’s source material and taken future X-MEN films into uncharted territory. In that, X-MEN: APOCALYPSE may have become a victim of the failed Josh Trank/Simon Kinberg FANTASTIC FOUR (2015) film, whose departure from the source material was too much for fans to accept and ended up a critical and commercial failure.

This time around, 20th Century Fox has made sure that its premium comic book, action franchise plays it by-the-numbers and delivers on everything audiences have come to expect. The problem with this, in the case of APOCALYPSE, is that no matter what the story delivers, the audience knows that it’s going to finish exactly where it started.

digital updates delivered

facebook

instagram