X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

"No more false gods. 

I'm here now."

I don't think I've ever seen so many dramatic single tear drops in one film...

After an ancient mutant emerges and threatens to destroy mankind, the X-Men must unite and face him head on. 

By this point, I’ve totally lost track of the whole X-Men franchise with it’s many prequels, sequels and spin offs. I’ve seen the original two X-Men movies along with the most recent installation ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’ which wasn’t too bad so, as I sat down to ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’, I didn’t have much to go on. 

What followed was one of the cheesiest film experiences I've had in a long time...

As far as plot goes in this X-Men prequel/sequel hybrid, it's pretty much your bog standard "end of the world" situation. You've got a big blue dude who's more powerful than the other blue dudes so all the blue dudes must come together and fight the biggest blue dude or the world will end. Slightly exaggerating as not all of the X-Men are blue but you get the gist. 

And that's your 2 hour movie folks.

You are taken back to ancient Egypt for the re-introduction to the X-Men world as Apocalypse is revealed. Believed to be the very first mutant, he's a badass with some powerful superpowers. 

At first, it appears that there are a lot of stakes. This ancient mutant is gathering a team of powerful outcasts and is planning on dominating earth and becoming a god. As the film proceeds, you soon begin to realise that there are actually no stakes at all. All of the "new" cast members are all featured in the other movies and the main X-Men are obviously there for the long haul. For me, this deflated the whole film. All the action became hollow showpieces and had no impact on the plot because, at the end of the day, you already know the outcome. This seems to be an issue in just about every prequel I’ve ever seen, there's no danger or excitement in watching an action sequence where you know no one is going to get hurt. You know for a fact that everyone is going to come out of it alive because you’ve seen them in later films so when the tagline of the film is “only the strong will survive” I find it a bit hard to believe...

The performances vary wildly from character to character due to some exceptionally difficult dialogue to spew out. Two actors in particular that I felt really struggled were unfortunately two of the main female roles, Sophie Turner as Jean Grey and Jennifer Lawrence as Raven/Mystique. Hammy dialogue and poorly written characters make for a battle between the actor and the audience. 

Most of the seasoned actors that you’d expect solid performances from deliver quite well, Michael Fassbender being one of them. He seems to always be convincing and relatable in every role I've seen him in. It was nice to see him bring some humanity to a character that could very easily become a caricature. Alongside James McAvoy, he holds a lot of the film together when the comic relief in Quicksilver (who I initially thought was The Flash…) isn't on screen. Played by Evan Peters, Quicksilver is pretty entertaining. I distinctly remember him from ‘Days of Future Past’ and he definitely has some of the best scenes in the film. 

Oscar Isaac plays the main villain Apocalypse and does a pretty good job. Personally, I think he’s currently one of the most interesting actors working in Hollywood and he did the best job he could with a comic book villain. He’s menacing and wants to take over the world and you believe him so I suppose that’s all you really need in a villain like this.

What I did like about 'X-Men: Apocalypse' was the fact that there were a lot of practical make-up effects on the actors. This brought a whole new level to the film that a lot of other blockbusters are missing. Within the boundaries of the comic book universe, it felt real and more believable seeing the actual actors with prosthetics on. 

To balance this fantastic use of practical effects, there was some horrendous CGI... I’m not entirely sure if the CGI looked worse because of the intelligent use of practical effects or if they were just poorly executed. I’d like to think it was the because of the practical effects but, either way, a substantial amount of it looked really bad.

I feel that the cheese factor in this film has to be addressed… I’ve not properly cringed at a film as much as I did in this one in a long time. At some of the saddest scenes in the film I accidentally broke into uncomfortable giggles which was probably not the reaction they were looking for. If there was a world record for the amount of single tears drops that a film can have then I think 'X-Men: Apocalypse' would take that record with ease. I know the single tear drop cascading down a characters cheek can be dramatic but they certainly do flog a dead horse in this one. 

A little cheesiness is good in a film like this but I don’t think a lot of it was deliberate. You can only pass it off as over the top comic book silliness for so long before you have to look at it objectively and realise that it’s just plain cheesy. Especially when this film in particular was taking itself relatively seriously. You can't take a character back to Auschwitz and try and tell me that it's all just shits and giggles...

Overall, ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’ is pretty cheesy film that, for me, is just another blur in a long line of comic book films. It has ups and downs with performances, an overblown and predictable plot and so much cheese it’s hard to see anything other than the single tear drops. 

Is it bad that I really want a beloved character to die? Just brutally mauled by a villain like Apocalypse and the next movie is just all the characters coping with PTSD because of what they've seen. 

There's your next movie Marvel. 

'X-Men: Apocalypse Now'.