X-Men: Apocalypse

Cast: James McAvoy, Jennifer Laurence, Nicolas Hoult, Oscar Issac, Evan Peters, Sophie Turner, Ben Hardy, and Rose Byrne.

Director: Bryan Signer

Release Date: 2016

Running Time: 2hrs 23 minutes

Genre: Action

Rating: PG-13

Synopsis:

Apocalypse is the first and most powerful mutant in the X-Men series, immortal and invincible. After waking up after thousands of years, he is shocked with the world that he finds, recruits a team of powerful mutants, including Magneto to help cleanse a new world order to which he will reign. Professor X and the team, must get together a team of young X-men and save mankind from complete destruction.

X-Men: Apocalypse is the eighth film in the series. It's a wonder Bryan Signer chooses to keep going after the lack of success from Days of Future Past. A film that is supposedly made by Marvel, but never runs freely with the label, no where near up to the standards of "The Avengers" or "Deadpool" however still very entertaining in it's own right. Signer could not of made a more different film from the previous, are we still stuck in the same time zone? No, ten years have passed since Days of Future Past first happened. The new characters that we are introduced too, aren't fully aware of what happened in the past and are still developing their gifts, Scott has a power very similar to Superman allowing him to laser through anything with his eyes, Jean Grey can't quite come to terms with her telepathy and Nightcrawler, is he supposed to be a lizard? A Dragon?

Are the characters lacking in characterization? No, quite the opposite, James McAvoy delivers a far better performance then he did in the previous X-men film, he brings his character to life, it's the Professor X we know from the previous X-Men films, Jennifer Laurence appears to be much more comfortable in her role as Mystique, she too has gained control of her powers and no longer appears blue. Peters again delivers a fantastic performance as Quicksilver, however again seems to steal the show with his performance. Something doesn't fit well with Rose Byrne, apart from the fact that she has a bit of past history with Charles Xavier, her character is pretty pointless.

Although beautifully shot unfortunately the only scene that stands out, is a sequence involving Quicksilver where he rescues everyone from the school from an explosion, what causes that explosion is another story all together. Singer has chosen to use beautiful close ups of the mutants through out the film, there are also some great aerial shots over the school and over the sequence in which Quicksilver rescues everyone was very well thought out and brilliantly shot in slow motion, really bringing the scene and the character of Quicksilver to life. The storyline doesn't drag quite as much as Days of future past however there are a few moments that really drag down the film that are quite unnecessary, particularly those shot in Egypt. A very familiar face does make a very nice comeback, it's not certain that the new mutants are aware of who he is. Apocalypse is full of fast moving action sequences, fantastic choreographed fight sequences, and plenty of explosions that put all of the other X-Men films to shame.

Sadly, no where near as good as other Marvel Films, none the less, still very entertaining and definitely the best in the franchise so far.

4/5 stars