Movie Review: X-Men: Apocalypse

WARNING: Spoilers Ahead


     X-Men: Apocalypse is the last movie in this new trilogy of X-Men First Class movies. I did enjoy First Class and Days of Futures Past was really cool as well. Apocalypse in my opinion was a bad way to end the trilogy. I liked some of the drama and the personal conflicts within the movie itself but I was just not a fan of the movie overall. The idea of following idols and heroes, and the battle for doing what is right are the two main things I picked up on, but I am sure there is some more I am missing out on. The teams were Apocalypse vs Mystique and these teams did not seem right to me. Anyways, it was these teams pretty much fighting over Magneto, who was living a peaceful life until the people in his town found out he was a mutant. His family was killed and he started attacking them as revenge. Apocalypse recruits him so that he could help destroy the world and start over, also picking up Storm, Angel, and Psilock to join his evil team. Mystique wants to try and save Magneto so she tries to convince Professor X to locate him and help her save him. This does not work out in their favor and Professor X is taken by Apocalypse in order to be his new host. The movie goes on from there, but it pretty much ends with the X-Men fighting team Apocalypse while Quicksilver and Mystique try to convince Magneto to stop what he is doing. Professor X tries to mind battle or something with Apocalypse but gets is ass kicked. All the X-Men who are still able to fight attack Apocalypse's body and it ends with Jean Gray killing Apocalypse using her Phoenix powers.
     Apocalypse is suppose to be one of the biggest bad guys in the Marvel Universe and especially the X-Men franchise. I must admit that my own understanding of Apocalypse's powers in the comics is very limited, but from what I understand is that he has control of this alien armor he wears, some form of immortality, can grow and shrink, fly, and transform into his previous hosts. Pretty impressive array of powers, which were not really explained in the movie. They really only said he could take the powers of whoever is his new host and the powers carry over to the next one. I guess in comics he was also able to use psi powers but during the movie he just kind of did whatever he wanted with his powers whenever it was suitable for him. He was opening portals, having crazy mind psychic powers, and I think telekinesis as well. So it just kind of seemed like he had all these random powers and could just do whatever he needed, but he never really did anything. He was this all powerful being that lost the only battle he fought. It would have been cool to see this new group of X-Men fight him and lose so that the audience could get a sense of how powerful he truly was and how much was really at stake here. When they finally fought him it just kind of seemed like he had this random plan to destroy the world and they had to stop him. I guess he did small stuff through out the movie to build the conflict, but it just did not really seem that big.
     Mystique seemed to also gain a lot of recognition as well. After "saving the president" people have begun to love her and apparently they teach about her in school now too...crazy. I get that Jennifer Lawrence is like a big part of this trilogy and she has a lot of fan love, but I just feel like the studio tried to push her on everyone and made her a symbol for hope and she kind of didn't deserve it. Like this trilogy just ended up feeling like a big redemption arc for her and no one else was really able to get the spotlight like they deserved. She was pretty much the main driving force for the movie and I just don't feel like that was right. Maybe because I haven't read that much X-Men and she really does become a signal for hope in the comics, but overall that's not the Mystique I wanted to see in this trilogy. I wanted to see the one from the original trilogy that was a bad ass. This Mystique had personal conflict after personal conflict, and this did not really allow anyone else to grow as a character in my opinion. The audience was forced to care about what she was gonna do next and not really care about anyone else. I do think that this personal conflict was better than in the other movies though. Her struggling with what she wants to be. Her original intention in DoFP (Days of Futures Past) was not to save the president so to be shown as a hero although that was not her intention was interesting. She had to deal with the fallout of that as well, now she has an entire generation that looks up to her and is willing to follow her lead. If Professor X isn't careful his school may become Mystique's Home for Gifted Youngsters.
     The parallels between Mystique and Apocalypse were pretty clear. I thought it was suppose to be the whole Devil vs God conflict or something similar to that. Mystique is this great person that used her powers for good to help mankind and Apocalypse is this bringer of death. The people who followed Mystique did so out of respect and knowing it was the right thing to do, and they thought they could really help people. Apocalypse's horsemen followed him for power and what he had to offer in return. They were a group of mutants who want to better themselves. I do think that Angel and Psilock were the only two people who wanted to actually follow him. Storm and Magneto sort of got tricked into it, but both tried to redeem themselves as well when they attacked him at the end with the X-Men.
     There were some other things that bothered me in the movie that were kind of small but still in my opinion might have made the movie better. For this franchise each movie is supposed to take place 10 years later, which is a cool idea in my opinion. It allows the last movie's effects to really play out and each movie you aren't just pushing a conflict unnaturally. The only thing that bothered me visually about this is that all the actors from First Class should be around 40 and starting to get older. This really was not shown, Havok of all people looked like he was 25 when he died, and the events of First Class were 20 years ago! Mystique it makes sense, seeing as she is a shape shifter, but everyone else should have started to gray a little bit or something to show the age difference. Also Jubilee and Psilock were supposed to be a big deal having been cast in an X-Men movie. Both of them only had a handful of scenes and Psilock was the only one that got to use her powers. Which were really cool, but she could have done more. This is another reason why Apocalypse should have fought in two battles against the X-Men, so they could really show her off and some of Apocalypse's powers a little more. This would have also added some extra weight to the final battle, they have to fight overwhelming odds a second time having lost the first battle, but this time the whole world is at stake. In my opinion the best part of this movie was knowing the original team of X-Men is back together and that they could do a cool Old Man Logan story with this "new" wolverine that escaped. They could put it in current time or make it a little bit in the future. Time has already changed, so they could have it so the future is unknown and Old Man Logan is all that is left of his original friends. I just hope this new X-Men trilogy is better, and it focuses more on the team as a whole. I thought it would be cool if they modeled their universe more like the Marvel one where it's the X-Men movies are team ups but you have smaller solo movies that give more character development to the characters. The X-Men comics are also all written as teams, so this idea might be a little bit harder to do...but hey it would be cool to me. Hopefully there is more fallout as well from Jean Gray using her powers. She just used this crazy strong power that no one knows about, and if you read comics or saw X3 you know she can not really control them. I think it'd be cool to add on to her being alienated for the powers she posses. A drawback may be that she pretty much beat Apocalypse single handed. So now is there any other real threat for this team? They just have to let her release her powers and it is game over every time, so I am interested in seeing how that plays out.
     Thanks for reading my review, this is just some of my thoughts on the movie and I hope you liked them. Please feel free to comment if you don't think I was right, you agreed, or you want my opinion on something else about the movie I didn't touch on.