X-Men: Apocalypse review

X-Men: Apocalypse review

"The best comic book movie of 2016"

5/5 Reviewed by Adi Mursec

There are a lot of fans out there waiting for Marvel Studios to build up more of the Avengers team and DC/WB to finally get round to a Justice League movie but X-Men: Apocalypse goes to show how well Fox have been doing. They did the superhero team-up movie years ago and have been doing an amazing job ever since the first one was released in 2000.

This movie is probably as close to a perfect superhero movie that we can get. It’s got a great balance of actual emotional entertainment from a movie but then mushed together with some amazing special effects which keeps every part of of your brain excited throughout.

The movie starts off with Apocalypse back in ancient Egyptian times. At this point he is probably at his peak and rules the world collecting powers from other mutants. His human followers revolt and bury him within his own collapsed pyramid. There he sleeps for thousands of years until mutant worshippers awake him.

Compared to the other X-men movies this one comes across as much more smooth watch, nothing seems too rushed and are given a good back story to each mutant or at least as much of the back story as we need. It does an amazing job of introducing the new recast mutants including Cyclops, Jean Grey and Storm while updating us on where the old recast team are and even managed to throw in the most violent Wolverine scene we’ve seen yet.

The new recast additions to the team have been well cast. Sophie Turner (Sansa Stark from Game Of Thrones) was one of those castings which I was a bit dubious of at first. I loved the original Jean played by Famke Janssen and it’s a shame she won’t be returning to the role any time soon but I think Sophie Turner has done a great job and any fan of the comics or TV show will be very impressed. Where it took us three movies for Jean to show her full potential in the original trilogy we get to see her go all phoenix on Apocalypse.

Although Jean does have a big part in the movie it’s overall a very well balanced movie, unlike the Avengers which have been very sided to Iron Man This X-men movie gives them all focus at one point or another showing they are strong alone but stronger together making the perfect superhero team-up movie.

Like I mentioned earlier it’s not just a superhero movie there is a lot of emotionally charged moments in this movie. At the start we see Magento played by Michael Fassbender did fine piece after trying to destroy the world in previous movies. He’s settled down with a family and even has well placed human job in an iron factory. It’s here we see him make one mistake, trying to save a fellow co-worker from an accident which leads them to a witch hunt and accidental death of his family. Losing his only anchor in the world he goes full on kill all humans mode. Most of the sentimental parts of the movie revolve around Magnito and his troubled past, he’s a great character for telling those second chance stories.

One thing we have really needed in all the X-Men movies is the cartoon theme tune to make an appearance another has been a more comic accurate Storm. Halle Berry did a good job in the original franchise but if we use those movies as prototypes the storm that Alexandra Shipp plays is much closer to the one we need in the movies.

Olivia Munn x-men sword workOverall the movie was very well balanced with screen time, I was worried it might be just a Jennifer Lawrence movie going off the trailer but her Mystique was placed well in the movie. One thing I left the movie wanting more of was Olivia Munn’s Psylocke. She’s one of the mutants which is as accurate to the comics as possible. Great casting, amazing costume and with movie her action scenes moving so fast they have to slow down some of her scenes and you get to see every freckle on her face. Sometimes when people get cast in comic book movies they don’t take them seriously but not Olivia, even before they started filming we got to see her working on her sword stunts.

What has made the X-men movies stand alone in all the comic book franchises we see nowadays is how they are all made pretty much stand alone. They aren’t made to sell the next movie, they all hold their own and have done the superhero team-up for years. I can’t wait for the next X-men movie and hope Bryan Singer just keeps making them for the next twenty years. He’s got an amazing vision and has been making these movies for so long he makes it look easy, there aren’t any mistakes, he’s gone through the prototyping stage and utilises the wealth of Marvels mutants to its fullest.

2016 has been a very big year for comic book movies as we saw the long awaited release of Batman Vs Superman, Captain America Civil War but I think this has been the best so far. It’s ambitious, well executed and modest.

Posted by Adi Mursec on May 19, 2016

Meanwhile...

Final X-Men: Apocalypse trailer

The final HD trailer for X-Men Apocalypse has been released. Beware it shows off some amazing scenes from the movie along with a lot of the story.

X-Men Apocalypse Trailer

The first full trailer for Bryan Singers X-Men Apocalypse, the first in the time travel rebooted X-men universe

Picture of Jubilee In X-Men Apocalypse

The first picture of Lana Condor as Jubilee in the 2016 X-Men Apocalypse movie has surfaced online and the costume looks just like the comics

X-Men: Apocalypse won’t include Wolverine

Hugh Jackman won’t be in X-Men: Apocalypse but will return for one last solo movie.

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