AS trilogies go it is rare to find a third installment which outshines the previous two. This can be for many reasons such as story development, introducing too many new characters or even something as simple as changing the theme.
Unfortunately, X Men: Apocalypse suffers from all three of these points. Don't get me wrong, it isn't Last Stand level of poor, but marks a disappointing ending to what could've been the perfect X Men trilogy.
With First Class and Days of Future Past the film was set during large events in America's history such as the Cuban Missile Crisis and the assassination of JFK, but Apocalypse pulls the mutants away from this clever plot structure to focus on one of the team's most formidable enemies, the main man himself, Apocalypse.
Starting with the birth of Oscar Isaac's iteration of the big bad during the times of Ancient Egypt, the film throws you straight into the history of the supposed 'God'. Whilst this is quite an exciting prospect, having such a powerful antagonist for our friendly X Men to battle with, it just feels like it has either been done too late or completely rushed.
When we arrive in the 80's we find ourselves meeting a group of familiar faces, well characters rebooted with younger actors. This was one of the most exciting prospects for me as Nightcrawler has to be my favourite character from the comics (with the exception of Deadpool, but I shall touch on that later). In fact, the rebooting of the characters is the strongest part of this movie, Sophie Turner (Game of Thrones' Sansa Stark) plays a struggling Jean Grey quite well and Tye Sheridan as a teenage angsty Cyclops is entertaining.
One of the main elements of this film is Apocalypse gathering his Four Horsemen, in fact that probably lasts longer than the end spectacle. Magneto, Archangel, Psylocke and Storm fill the roles after being promised a place in the new world and having their powers cranked up to 11. But as Horsemen, they don't really seem to do much, there is the fight at the end of the film but very little gravity to bring these characters down to Earth.
Going into this film you can expect a lot of flashbacks to the previous installments, well more First Class than DoFP, supposedly to bring the trilogy into a full circle, but even that sadly falls short of the mark.
The one element carried on from DoFP is the hilarious Quicksilver (fantastically played by Evan Peters) who once again has the most entertaining scene in the film to the tune of Eurythmics. A real stand-out moment in what can be described as an average superhero film.
In the film there are certain aspects which try and stay fairly loyal to the comics, one moment stands out in particular, and that is the cameo from the wild one himself Wolverine. His scene in the film is a true depiction of what Wolverine is supposed to be, feral and violent. I am sure the increased amount of violence was used after the success of the bloody, sweary Deadpool film and as the latest Wolverine film has been given an R rating (probably a 15 in the UK) it wouldn't be a surprise that Fox are trying to emulate the blockbusting success of the Merc with a mouth. And that doesn't bother me in the slightest as Wolverine was always supposed to be a much more violent character.
Overall X Men: Apocalypse has its merits, but still falls short of the mark when the overall trilogy is concerned. For die hard fans this film will probably satisfy their needs, but for me I can honestly say that I was not convinced.
No comments:
Post a Comment