I wasn’t sure what to expect when I went to see this movie. The reviews were downright nasty. I’m pleased to say that after watching this movie, I think it was all right.
The premise is this: the X-Men have to fight Apocalypse, the first mutant who is bent on destroying the world and starting over. It’s a simple premise, but an effective vehicle for the action and to explore the characters of this movie.
And that really is the main draw of an X-Men movie: the super-powered action and the exploration of each of the mutants and how their powers have affected their lives.
Going into any one aspect of the movie isn’t going to be that helpful so I’ll just list out some noteworthy things as follows:
For the longest time, I’ve wanted a movie that centered on Cyclops and explored his character more. He is a character who effectively has a canon strapped to his head that he can’t control and will killed anyone he looks at. This movie did Cyclops justice, but I think you could easily write a movie about him and his leadership of the X-Men.
Jean Grey was also great, although I kind of wish they casted someone other than Sansa Stark. She was fine though.
The ending was okay, if not cheesy. The term X-Men is kind of awkward to say out loud. It made more sense back in the day when the term G-Men (which referred to government agents/men) was a part of the American vernacular. I wish they explained that more in the movies, that it was a play on words of G-Men.
Quicksilver has another cool scene, but kind of redundant now. They should have opted for something less funny and more serious.
Nice to see McAvoy, Lawrence, and Fassbender again. Unfortunately, there just wasn’t enough time in the movie to explore their characters more deeply. The movie is already over two hours long.
Action was okay. Not spectacular. Quicksilver’s scene stands out. Surprisingly, Psylocke has a number of really cool action moves going on, like falling of a plane and psychic knifing a building to slow her descent. That was pretty cool.
In conclusion, the movie was all right. I have this image in my mind of exactly the kind of X-Men movie I want to see and while Brian Singer gets close, he just has too much unnecessary fluff in his films. I can tolerate Lawrence’s more prominent role in the movie since she is one of the most popular actors right now, but I would have liked a more focused story. I still enjoyed the movie though.
Score: 6.4/10
Elliot's View 