Bryan Singer's 2016 sequel follows Days of Future Past with a film of visual ambition and almost complete narrative inertia, a bloated blockbuster that introduces too many characters, develops none of them adequately, and resolves its central conflict with a world-ending climax that the franchise's more intelligent entries had always managed to avoid. Michael Fassbender's Magneto arc is the one element that functions as genuine drama.
At a Glance
Director: Bryan Singer
Runtime: 144 minutes
Starring: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Oscar Isaac, Sophie Turner, Tye Sheridan, Kodi Smit-McPhee
Release: 2016
Critics Rating: ★★ (2/5 stars, a bloated and inert sequel that squanders the goodwill of two exceptional predecessors)
Audience Rating: ★★½ (2.5/5 stars, a frustrating step backwards)
Review Breakdown
Plot
En Sabah Nur, the world's first mutant, awakens in 1983 after millennia of dormancy and sets about recruiting four Horsemen to help him destroy and remake the world. The X-Men must stop him. The plot is the franchise's most formulaic, a world-ending threat of such enormous scale that it generates almost no tension. The film's structural problem is its ensemble, which is too large for the screen time available and which prevents any character from developing the depth and complexity that the franchise's best work demonstrates.
Characters
Michael Fassbender's Magneto is the film's one genuine dramatic achievement. His arc, in which Erik's attempt to build a normal life is destroyed by a tragedy that drives him back to Apocalypse's side, is handled with a conviction that the film around it does not deserve. Oscar Isaac's Apocalypse is the franchise's most glaring villain miscalculation, a character of enormous power and almost no personality whose motivations are too abstract to generate any threat. Isaac is a performer of considerable range reduced to a one-note role whose elaborate costume prevents him from using the qualities that make him one of his generation's most compelling screen presences. James McAvoy's Xavier is reduced largely to a reactive role. Jennifer Lawrence's Mystique is given a prominence that reflects her increased star power rather than any narrative necessity. The new young cast members are uniformly capable but uniformly underserved.
Tone
Apocalypse lacks the period specificity and the visual energy of First Class and Days of Future Past, settling for a 1980s aesthetic that is more decorative than substantive. The Quicksilver sequence is the film's most purely enjoyable moment, but it highlights by contrast how much the surrounding film lacks the invention and the wit of its predecessor.
Meaning / Themes
The film gestures toward themes of power, destruction, and the possibility of a better world, but these are delivered with such shallowness that they register as noise rather than meaning. The film's most interesting concern, whether Erik can ever escape the cycle of loss and violence that defines his life, is handled with care in the Magneto sequences and then largely abandoned in the more spectacular second half.
Direction
Singer's direction is technically accomplished in its action sequences and least interesting in its character scenes. The climactic confrontation is visually impressive in scale but spatially incoherent and hollow in its stakes. The film's 144-minute runtime is its most persistent directorial failure, a length that the dramatic substance cannot justify.
Cultural Reception
X-Men: Apocalypse received mixed reviews on its release and was a moderate commercial success, underperforming relative to Days of Future Past's expectations. Critics acknowledged Fassbender's Magneto arc and the Quicksilver sequence while condemning Isaac's villain, the crowded ensemble, and the formulaic climax. It is now regarded as the point at which the McAvoy-Fassbender era lost its creative momentum, and the film's failure to build on Days of Future Past's goodwill is widely cited as a significant missed opportunity for the franchise.
Final Verdict: A frustrating step backwards that wastes the momentum built across two exceptional predecessors. Michael Fassbender's Magneto arc is the film's one genuine dramatic success, but Oscar Isaac's Apocalypse is the franchise's most squandered villain, the crowded ensemble is given insufficient development, and the formulaic world-ending climax represents everything the franchise's best work had always managed to avoid.