There’s so much more wrong with X-Men: Apocalypse than right, which makes the recent home entertainment release a rental option at best with shocking dialogue, woeful makeup and a muddled timeline pulling the Egyptian rug from underneath the potential of the film. These frustrations mean it shouldn’t really get a place in many DVD collections, which is a huge shame after the quality and promise of X-Men: First Class and X-Men: Days Of Future Past.
There are a few positives that make it worth a rental though, not least of all the overarching story featuring the age-old mutant and self proclaimed god that is Apocalypse. He’s a big character from the comic books and TV cartoon series, and while there are a number of elements that undo the overall impact of the him in the film, he’s still pretty impressive at times.
The back story of his Egyptian domination, subsequent imprisonment and modern day release is pretty cool and it sets things up well for the prospect of an epic battle with the X-Men. In all fairness to Oscar Issacs (Star Wars: The Force Awakens), he does a pretty good job of injecting as much power and weight into his portrayal of Apocalypse, but his acting might doesn’t make up for the poor makeup job he’s given, or the slightly tame confrontation with Professor X and team in the closing section of the film.
Painting up his face with a little bit of blue makeup just looks a bit naff without the required facial reconstruction that would have made him look more the part. It’s an issue that the X-Men films have been poor at in the post-First Class era, but it’s all the more noticeable in Apocalypse. Beast is terrible, looking like his fur has been bought from the local joke shop and stuck on with sticky back tape, Nightcrawler isn’t great either and the finish for Mystique is way too obvious when she’s in her more natural blue form, so you start to lose faith in the film’s authenticity pretty fast.
Credibility takes an even bigger dip during the Wolverine scene, which features a clearly modern day Hugh Jackman playing a much younger version of himself, which just doesn’t work for us. The fight choreography and stunt work is a little off too, so it ends up feeling stilted, ham-fisted and out of place, which is a million miles away from what we’re used to from the likes of Wolverine and what we’re hoping to get in Logan next year.
This is just one of a few story arcs that stick out in the film as odd situation follows odd situation in the construction of the set pieces. We ended up spending a lot of time watching the film thinking, “that’s not how things should go”, which was pretty annoying in the extreme. A good example is Erik Lehnsher’s fall to the dark side, which comes across as a bit forced as the writing team of Simon Kinberg, Bryan Singer, Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris go too far out of their way to add emotional motivation to Magneto’s efforts for Apocalypse.
If the botched story arcs aren’t enough to scupper the film’s chance of impressing, the dialogue finishes the job off with some awful lines for Charles Xavier and the rest of the X-Men. Apocalypse has some good chat every now and again, but the reality is that a hell of a lot of this comes from the old comic book days, so it’s hardly original or fair to attribute it as a mark of success for screenplay writer Simon Kinberg.
As a result of all of this, the cast is a bit of a mixed bag, with elements of poor delivery intermingled with stars just trying to wrestle with bad scenes. There are a few moments of lucidity and promise in and among the muddle with a great first appearance for Alexandra Shipp as Ororo Munroe / Storm and a decent outing for Kodi Smit-McPhee as Kurt Wagner / Nightcrawler, even if he doesn’t always look that great when the camera focuses in on his make up.
For the most part, the special effects are a lot better than the efforts of the makeup department with some very cool sequences. It isn’t enough to make up for all of the things that are wrong with X-Men: Apocalypse, but they do pack a fair amount of punch, especially the early scenes with Apocalypse during his reign over Egypt. There’s also more epic Quicksilver scenes to look out for and while they’re slightly over-egged, they’re still a lot of fun to watch. It’s just a shame that isn’t the case for more of the film.
