Xavier’s School For the gifted is going strong with training mutants how to control their gifts including Jean Grey and Scott Summers.   Meanwhile, Erik (Michael Fassbender) is living a quiet family life with a wife and daughter in Poland- leaving behind his life as Magneto only to have tragedy soon strike his life again.  Also Mystique/ Raven (Jennifer Lawrence rescues Kurt Wagner/ Nightcrawler from a caged fight against Angel in East Germany.  Soon all of their lives will be shaken apart when CIA Agent Moria MacTaggart accidentally helps trigger the awakening of En Sabah Nur (Oscar Isaac), the first mutant who has been buried alive since the days of ancient Egypt.   En Sabah Nur sees the modern world and judges the humans not fit to rule the world.  He gathers four powerful mutants: Magneto, Angel, Psylocke, and Storm to serve as his four horseman to help him bring about a new age for mutants to rule the world.  A new team of X-men is former to stop En Sabah Nur and his Horsemen of the Apocalypse in X-MEN: APOCALYPSE, the conclusion to his new X-MEN trilogy started with X-MEN: FIRST CLASS.

 

X-MEN: APOCALYPSE ties up the events of the previous two movies while forming the framework to the events that would lead to the first X-MEN film.  Quicksilver has one of the most fun scenes in the movie while I also like the use of the original comic book costumes in this movie and providing origin stories of sort for many characters like Storm, Jean Grey (who sometimes reminds me of Sansa Stark instead of Jean Grey), and Scott Summers (Sophie Turner who is more likeable this time around) while introducing a few new characters: Psylocke, Archangel, Jubilee, and Caliban.  The movie even takes a jab at X-MEN: THE LAST STAND in a scene where some of the mutants remark about RETURN OF THE JEDI and how the third movie isn’t the best of the series.   X-MEN: APOCALYPSE is truly an end of the world fight for survival movie which hints at the Dark Phoenix storyline (which Kinberg and Singer always wanted to do correctly since X-MEN: THE LAST STAND).  However, the storyline to this movie is lazy compared to the last two which makes this enjoyable sequel not quite as good as what came before it.  A few characters aren’t given a lot to do and the set up is better than the end execution of some parts of the story.   Diehard X-Men comic fans will have a problem with this movie despite some of its nods to the comics and I hope the next X-Men movie is better written than X-MEN: APOCALYPSE.

 

This review is ©6-2-2016 David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission.  Send all comments to feedback@enterline-media.com

 

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