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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mel O&#039;Drama" data-source="post: 320066" data-attributes="member: 23">X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) <img src="https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.pinimg.com%2F736x%2Fed%2F45%2F6c%2Fed456c881f8c4cc4fee74480e4339257--james-mcavoy-michael-fassbender-apocalypse-movies.jpg&f=1&nofb=1" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="width: 419px" /> I'd say this is a middling entry that doesn't live up to its potential. In many ways the story is too big and the excess of CGI takes away any remaining intimacy. Michael Fassbender's Magneto is probably the best thing in this and I remain impressed with how much he sounds and moves like Ian McKellen's iteration with each passing film. Conversely, I care less and less for James McAvoy's Xavier. McAvoy's very good at crying and once again he does it rather a lot. Not only is it most out of character, but also the more I watch McAvoy's performance the more I find the over-emoting rather hammy. Incidentally, there's a scene near the end where Magneto and Xavier's dialogue is lifted verbatim from the end of the first X-Men film which reinforced the older actors' superiority in terms of delivery. Fassbender and McAvoy delivered it far too quickly and with no real space for the words to land. Apocalypse is a dull villain (I was never a fan of him in the comics either) and lacks any kind of connection with the characters that make this feel important. The  psychic battle with Charles made it feel like they were doing an Amahl Farouk/Shadow King story but with a more marketable villain. I found myself wishing they'd gone with Farouk. With the setting being 1983, there are even more young versions of characters than in previous films. Angel was even more wasted here than in The Last Stand. Scott and Jean haven't clicked with me yet. Scott is now at least played with the humility with which I associate the character but neither Tye Sheridan nor Sophie Turner look right. At all. Nightcrawler looked curiously androgynous, not helped by the Michael Jackson jacket and a bizarre asymmetrical wig resembling a girl band member... or Valene Ewing circa brain virus. Alexandra Shipp's Ororo was spot-on. I'd buy her as Storm and - better yet - I'd buy her as a young Halle Berry version of Storm. Continuity is incredibly messy at this point. Days Of Future Past might have retconned some stuff, but there's no real clarity around this and so it ends up convoluted and confusing. Alex and Scott's sibling relationship being acknowledged has only compounded the mess around that situation. They look the same age, but Alex would have to be twenty years older for the timelines to match up (notwithstanding the fact that Alex should really be Scott's younger brother, although it's explicitly said otherwise here). Why do Jean and Scott not recognise Wolverine in the first X-Men film when they'd evidently already met him back in 1983? The same goes for Nightcrawler who meets most of the X-Men here and does the same all over again in X2. And how is Jubilee a young student at Xavier's school in 1983 while also being a student of around the same age in the early Twenty-First Century? On top of this are the usual anachronisms, such as most of the young women having Kardashian vocal creak or "Hey" being used as a salutation. Then there's the issue with the accents. Olivia Munn may look the part for Psylocke (or at least the ridiculous body-exchanged version of the Jim Lee era), but where's the British accent. Once again Moira has no trace of a Scottish accent. And <s>Pietro</s> Peter sounds purely American as well. Speaking of Quicksilver, I neglected to mention him in the previous film. It's a little strange watching this having seen WandaVision where Evan Peters plays a recast (in canon) Quicksilver. He's not how I'd envisage <s>Pietro</s> Peter to be, but I do like what they've done with the character. At least he has a character, unlike Aaron Taylor-Johnson's duller than dull version of the character in Avengers: Age Of Ultron. And they've acknowledged he's Magneto's son. Now if only they'd acknowledge Wanda. I really do like the "Quicksilver Moment" that's happened in this and the previous X-Men film, where we see time slow down and watch Pietro do his thing - moving bullets round, changing people's positions, taking a sneaky taste of food - while everyone else is frozen. And all to the sound of a great era-appropriate song: Jim Croce's Time In A Bottle for Future Past;  Eurythmics' Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) for this film. [MEDIA=youtube]T9GFyZ5LREQ[/MEDIA] [MEDIA=youtube]ZnZqB5Z75zI[/MEDIA] It makes speed powers interesting, fun and actually crucial to the team and story. A Quicksilver Moment really shouldn't be the best thing about an X-Men film, but  since they've surprised me in the best possible way, I'll take them. Incidentally, I noticed that <s>Pietro</s> Peter was wearing a Six Million Dollar Man top in his introductory Apocalypse scene, which nicely foreshadowed this slow-motion-to-show-speed scene. Not to mention it shows he has good taste. I found myself laughing out loud at Mystique's pep-talk to the students at film's end because I just kept hearing Debbie Allen saying "You got big dreams. You want fame. Well fame costs..."</blockquote>

Verification: Who played JR Ewing?