Review | Film review – X-Men: Apocalypse is one prequel too many for storied franchise
Story of god-like mutant and his four horsemen who set out to rid the world of sin, with only the X-Men to thwart them, is too bloated and action-packed for its touching human moments to linger
2.5/5 stars
Early in X-Men: Apocalypse, young telepath Jean Grey says to fellow trainee mutants: “At least we can agree that the third one’s always the worst.” She’s referring to Return of the Jedi, and screenwriter Simon Kinberg surely wrote the line intending to give a playful wink at the audience. But a joke ceases to be funny if it’s entirely accurate, with all irony lost.
Following two excellent entries (2011’s X-Men: First Class and 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past), the third prequel based on the popular Marvel mutant superhero team sets out to deliver a grandiose adventure with a cataclysmic dramatic reckoning, but mostly falls flat. Set in 1983, the story begins when an ancient, god-like Egyptian mutant dubbed Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac, in hilariously bad blue rubbery make-up) awakens after thousands of years. With his Messiah complex out of control, he decides to rid the world of its sins – meaning most of earth’s population. Speaking platitudes in a monotone that never varies, he convinces four mutants (aka the Four Horsemen) to join him on his path of destruction.
It’s up to the X-Men, led by Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and shape-shifting mutant Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), to confront Apocalypse. The stakes for them are at once large and small: they have to prevent the extinction of civilisation and rescue the soul of one of the Horsemen, long-time X-Men frenemy Magneto (Michael Fassbender).
