Apocalypse features some surprisingly dark violence (Angel’s ‘upgrade’ will have younger viewers squirming), balanced out by some nice one-liners. With their sprawling casts, the X-Men movies have always been at their strongest in the smaller beats between the big set-pieces. And when his world-ending plan starts to come into effect, there’s little in the way of perspective to put it into context, making it hard to appreciate the magnitude of the stakes in a way that never troubled the history-specific climaxes of its predecessors. Quite why he actually needs the Horsemen is never particularly clear. Isaac has recently been proving himself one of the most versatile actors of his generation, but buried as he is under masses of make-up and impressive body armour, he’s unable to convincingly sell the baddie’s motivation or powers. Of the Horsemen, Psylocke (Olivia Munn), Storm (Alexandra Shipp) and Angel (former EastEnder Ben Hardy) certainly look the part, but there’s no time to give them anything like discernible character traits.Īpocalypse similarly fails to carve out much in the way of distinctive characteristics.
The new class is also extremely appealing Tye Sheridan makes for a cooler Cyclops than James Marsden, Kodi Smit-McPhee is a spot-on Nightcrawler (turns out that bamf-ing is still a hell of a lot of fun), and Game of Thrones’ Turner brings the required poise and angst to Jean Grey. It helps that First Class was so well cast, with McAvoy, Fassbender and Lawrence slipping back into their roles with ease, bringing gravitas to go with the backstory baggage.
With so many characters to serve, some are inevitably shortchanged. In fact, there’s so much going on that it becomes a bit exhausting at times, and anyone lacking a half-decent grasp of the mythology thus far should probably sit it out. When you have a villain who’s all but omnipotent, it takes a lot of heroes to go up against him. The action is similarly huge, from the pyramid-razing antics of the opening sequence to a final multi-mutant smackdown on a scale that dwarfs previous entries in the franchise.
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