How entertaining? ★★☆☆☆
Thought provoking? ★☆☆☆☆ 18 May 2016
A movie review of X-MEN: APOCALYPSE. |
YouTube review:
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“The weak have taken the Earth,” Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac)
What a disappointment from the previous highs of X2 and DAYS OF FUTURE PAST. A significant dip in quality. No emotional heft. None of the interesting melancholy. A single decent sequence – Quicksilver (Evan Peters) briefly saving the day, to the soundtrack of the Eurythmics’ ‘Sweet Dreams’, at 3000 frames per second; though even that has poor visual effects and is an echo of a similar scene in the previous film. It typifies the constant déjà vu of superior moments in earlier chapters.
What a disappointment from the previous highs of X2 and DAYS OF FUTURE PAST. A significant dip in quality. No emotional heft. None of the interesting melancholy. A single decent sequence – Quicksilver (Evan Peters) briefly saving the day, to the soundtrack of the Eurythmics’ ‘Sweet Dreams’, at 3000 frames per second; though even that has poor visual effects and is an echo of a similar scene in the previous film. It typifies the constant déjà vu of superior moments in earlier chapters.
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Almost as bad as third instalment, THE LAST STAND, the filmmakers even hubristically diss it in a meta way. As characters leave RETURN OF THE JEDI, Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) opines, "We can all agree the third one is always the worst." They should not have done that in light of the shoddy storytelling and character quality here.
Apocalypse just wants to "cleanse", i.e. destroy, the world like Ultron in the last AVENGERS. His motivation feels so pointless. He spends much of the runtime assembling his squad and upgrading powers. If there was a TV show within this film, it might be called ‘Marvel’s Next Top Model’, what with all the new outfits. *I’ll get my coat.* Olivia Munn’s get-up turns pretty skimpy, like she has just come from the set of BAYWATCH where she’s been itching to unleash her laser sword/lasso (it is as stupid as that sounds). Apocalypse is the equivalent of an ungainly mobile phone battery, topping up skills. He is meant to be the most powerful mutant, yet does not do anything apart from meld people with their surroundings and evaporate a few heads (why he didn’t use that latter weapon on his mutant adversaries is not explained). On a side note, mutants are said to have only come about in the 20th century, and Apocalypse existed thousands of years ago, why the gap in time?
Nemeses that merely want to brainlessly demolish have run their course in blockbuster cinema. The climax is an anodyne cacophony of light balls, laser rays and intangible explosions. Beams of destruction emanate from chests and hands noisily. (One kept half-expecting the Care Bears to turn up and join in the fray.) The filmmakers have never bothered with this kind of Michael Bay-hem nonsense before, except for the insipid THE LAST STAND, preferring a more intensely intimate cataclysm. Why the inane regression?
Where are the stakes? It seems the superhero franchises across studios are now reluctant to kill off popular characters, for fear of stymieing revenue streams. How dull.
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