Movie of the Week: X-Men Apocalypse

[jacey]

For some reason I missed blogging this back in May, so in the interests of providing a full and complete record, here it is, now, except...errr... it's a couple of months since I saw it and...it hasn't left much of a lasting impression. So that says something for starters. What does stand out is an interesting personal story for Eric (Magneto) who is incogneto Magneto working in a factory in Poland. When his wife and daughter are killed it turns him to the dark side (oops wrong movie, but you know what I mean). Michael Fassbender is once again, top-notch as Magneto. We also get to see the transition of Xavier from hirsute to egg-head. I still can't quite get my head around James McAvoy as a young Patrick Stewart, but - hey - that's my problem, not his. It was nice to see Sophie Turner (Sansa Stark in Game of Thrones) kicking arse as a young Jean Grey and Evan Peters did a decent turn at Quicksilver.

Apocalypse is a god-like entity, not an event, BTW, and it takes all the X-Men working together to stop him. There are a few twists and turns along the way, but any more an that would be a spoiler. What the movie gains in action it generally loses in characterisation. This followed on from the other X-Men prequels but it falls into the more-of-the-same-but -different category. There was nothng earth-shatteringly new in here.