X-Men: Apocalypse

X-Men: Apocalypse is fine. It's actually quite commendable just how fine it ends up being. At times it even revels in being just fine. Which is, of course, fine. If that's the bar you want to set for yourself, you can do a hell of a lot worse than fine. The fact that Apocalypse manages to be just fine is a godsend and the best anyone could hope for with Bryan Singer once again at the wheel.

The man isn't a bad director. In fact, he's perfectly fine. Which has been the problem with the entire X-Men franchise to this point. Even the ones we considered good way back in the dark days before the Marvel Cinematic Universe, those being the original X-Men and X2, just don't measure up to First Class or even Days of Future Past. And those only manage to be more than fine because Matthew Vaughn directed one and Singer picked up the sloppy seconds for the other. Now the influence of fresh blood has long since been squeezed out and we are once again back to the status quo of X-Men movies which are just fine. This is, as I said, perfectly fine, but the X-Men can be so much more than what Bryan Singer can manage.

At any rate: X-Men: Apocalypse. It's 1983 and all the returning cast members look like they've only aged about two years in an eleven year time-span since Days of Future Past (funny that). Charles Xavier has opened and established his School for Gifted Youngsters proper just in time for lazer-eyed Cyclops to enroll and meet telekinetic psychic extraordinaire Jean Grey, the super-smart super-strong Beast, the awkwardly adorable Nightcrawler, God Mode speedster Quicksilver, and Jennifer Lawrence who is trying her best to still care about being in an X-Men movie.

While the youngsters are meeting and greeting, Apocalypse, our big bad for the evening, has awoken from his ten thousand years of slumber. And now that he's free, it's time to conquer Earth. He gathers around him four Horsepeople (both men and women because even ancient Egyptian mutants respect gender equality) to guard him as he sets out to do all kinds of mean things. The Solid Gold Apocalypse Dancers includes Magneto (fresh from the deaths of his family and looking to vent all kinds of emotions), Storm (who is never actually called "Storm" therefore finally completing the circle of never actually being referred to by her proper name of Ororo Munroe, and now just doesn't have a name at all), Psylocke (somehow ending up as the most comics-accurate character in the entire film for some reason), and Angel (who is also in the movie). Now it's up to the mutant teenagers with attitude to put a stop to all the nasty world-conquering business.

The best thing Apocalypse has going for it is that it doesn't ruin anything and it never makes you glance at your watch. It's the point of being fine that I keep coming back to. All of the X-Men we know and love are depicted as they are supposed to be. There's nothing more to them, no substance, no defined arcs or depth, but they're fine. At no point did I ever think to myself "They've ruined him/her for all time!" But there's also no point I ever thought that they did anything of note with any of them. The worst off are Apocalypse's Horsepeople, who all look to have very interesting lives and personalities, but those aspects are snuffed out once they become a part of his goon squad. Except for Michael Fassbender's Magneto, but that's just Michael Fassbender. He makes everyone look far, FAR worse by comparison.

Notably the costumes the characters wear at the absolute end of the film are phenomenal, but for the majority we're stuck with civilian clothes are all-black pseudo-armor. I'll never understand Singer's fetish for this kind of gear, but hopefully this'll be the last we ever see of it.

Quicksilver is given another impressive slo-mo sequence, this one taking place during an explosion and getting their speedster bang for the speedster buck. But there's far too much jumping around making it less coherent and impressive than the one in Days of Future Past. Still nice and quirky, but it's been done better.

Also, Wolverine shows up. He's the best there is at what he does, and what he does is run around half-naked covered in stupid future tech looking very upset and stabs mall cops. There's nothing else to it and the sequence itself only exists to pad out the run time, but it's always good to see Hugh Jackman doing things. It's also especially good to see Wolverine get a little bloody for once.

Yet, nothing that happens is of any substance. There's just too many balls in the air. There's the young and familiar X-Men to establish, Mystique has to do her thing, Magneto has to do something because apparently he always has to be around even if he has NOTHING TO DO, Apocalypse has to be the villain, the Horsepeople have to do their things, and prom is, as always, tomorrow. Yet, just one month ago Captain America: Civil War managed to perform a similar juggling act and pulled it off magnificently so really the problem here is the direction.

Apocalypse strives to be something more, but ends up being fine. It does nothing, doesn't reveal a new dimension of these characters, and brings nothing new to the table of superhero cinema. But it also doesn't fail. Everything is by-the-books superhero fun, without anything to spice up the formula. Hopefully, for the next one, someone new is allowed to breath life into this franchise. I'm tired of mediocre X-Men films. They deserve so much better than this.

Score: C-