While so many genre movies are happy to emulate the story structure and visual conceits of video games, X-Men: Apocalypse has a much more analog role model. It’s a cinematic pinball machine, all Day-Glo colors and flashing lights and kinetic fury as characters who are as durable (and this time around, about as interesting) as steel balls hurtle from one random plot point to the next, banging into things and ringing every possible superhero bell without sweating the small stuff like why the hell they’re doing any of it.
Why, then, after two hours and 15 minutes of relentless motion, does it feel like the movie doesn’t actually go anywhere? It touches down in a lot of places, for sure—the plot, such as it is, bounces around between Cairo, Ohio, Poland, Berlin, and other locales at a dizzying pace as its heroes are tasked with no less than preventing the end of the world. But it does so in a haphazard, chaotic way, unfolding more as a series of non-sequiturs and fan-service tableaux than anything approaching a cohesive story. Sixteen years and nine movies in (counting a few solo spin-offs), it seems like the X-Men are finally losing their cinematic momentum.
It’s too bad that this franchise, once an innovator in the comic-book movie business, now seems desperate to keep up with everybody else. Part of the series’ charm—besides its inspired casting—has always been its relatively lo-fi and even experimental vibe, setting up such left-field creative successes as the hard-R, fourth-wall-smashing Deadpool and the quirky time-travel dramedy of Days of Future Past.
With Apocalypse, though, it feels like director Bryan Singer just isn’t that interested in the property anymore. He trades in most of the franchise’s wit and charm for scale and spectacle, cramming in as many characters and as much wall-to-wall destruction as possible. There’s an astonishing array of super-abilities on display, and the cast is as strong as ever when they’re not tied up in baroque eye-laser-lightning fights. But without giving anyone anything interesting to do, it’s all just so much mutant soup.
For an example of the movie’s ability to squander potential, look no further than its titular heavy. En Sabah Nur—or Apocalypse, as he’s sometimes known—may just be the blandest big-screen supervillain of the 21st century, but he’s played by one of its most interesting young actors. Poor Oscar Isaac might be acting his brains out under all that blue makeup, but between his goofy, overwrought dialogue and weirdly modulated voice, no one will ever know.
Apocalypse imagines his character essentially as an evil self-help guru, and his main business is to recruit his “four horsemen” by popping out of portals and telling them to find their inner strength. Once he’s assembled his mutant Manson family—for the small sliver of the population who cares but doesn’t already know, it consists of Storm (Alexandra Shipp), Magneto (Michael Fassbender), Psylocke (Olivia Munn), and Angel (Ben Hardy)—they set about their assigned task of ending the world because…well, because it’s 1983 and En Sabah Nur really doesn’t like the ’80s. Seriously, that’s his motivation for wanting to kill every human on the planet.
Which could have been pretty fantastic, if this movie had the scruffy charm and wry humor of Singer’s other three X-Men films. Those sensibilities pop up every now and then, most notably during a show-stopping set piece featuring Even Peters’ Quicksilver, and in a few throwaway moments showcasing new cast members such as Tye Sheridan and Sophie Turner (teenaged Cyclops and Jean Grey, respectively).
But Apocalypse is more concerned with falling in line than blazing new trails. Some of that isn’t necessarily the film’s fault—it’s the third movie in as many months to center on a bone-crunching, city-smashing clash between super-powered characters who should be on the same side, and woe be to any movie that has to follow Captain America: Civil War’s terrific, inventive superhero showdown. But why does it have to buy into just about every superhero movie cliché that’s been bandied about over the last few years? Of all the comic book franchises that are tumbling into theaters these days, X-Men could be the most imaginative and potentially innovative of the bunch. Now that a promising new cast has been installed, Apocalypse makes it clear that the franchise needs new blood behind the camera as well.
April Snellings is a staff writer and project editor for Rue Morgue Magazine, which reaches more than 500,000 horror, thriller, and suspense fans across its media platforms. She recently joined the lineup of creators for Glass Eye Pix's acclaimed audio drama series Tales from Beyond the Pale, an Entertainment Weekly “Must List” pick that has been featured in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.
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