I went into this movie with a great amount of trepidation. The best I've heard about it was that it was so-so, with most of the reviews overwhelmingly negative. And while I don't think it's great by any stretch of the imagination, I don't think it's particularly bad, either. If you are very insistent that the film follow source material and be a super-nerd about everything in the movie, yes, you will not like it. 20th Century Fox has been monkeying around with the X-Men continuity from the beginning. However, this is the first time that Marvel Studios actually was part of the process, and it shows. I have yet to see an X-Men movie blow me away, but ever since they have moved down this new prequel path starting with X-Men: First Class, it has been gradually improving. It is less a cynical cash grab than X-Men: The Last Stand was, but it's no Iron Man either.
The movie opens in ancient Egypt, where we find the first incredibly powerful mutant, Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac), who is betrayed by his followers and is buried underneath a gigantic pyramid. Skip ahead 10,000 years or so, and the ruins are found and he is set free. He feels he must take over this corrupt world and sit at the head as our god, but he never really elucidates this. He just rants a lot about weakness and corrupt leaders and laws a lot without making much sense. It is now 1983, about 10 years after the events of X-Men: Days of Future Past, and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) is in hiding in Poland with a new family. They end up accidentally killed and Magneto swears revenge. Apocalypse finds him and enlists him in his genocidal crusade. Meanwhile, Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) has set up his school for gifted youngsters with the dreams that mutants and humans can live together in peace someday. Of course, he and the X-Men go up against Apocalypse to fight for the world. We have old faces Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) and Beast (Nicholas Hoult) and new ones Scott Summer aka Cyclops (Tye Sheridan) and Jean Grey (Sophie Turner), setting up the Dark Phoenix saga (yes, again) for the next movie.
The problem with big ensemble movies like this is that there are too many characters to focus on, usually shortchanging one at the expense of another and almost always at the expense of the plot. Star Trek works well in this case because there are three main characters, Kirk, Spock and McCoy, with the rest of the cast in support. The Next Generation movies didn't really work because we know so much about each character and are invested in all of them, but there isn't enough time to delve into each of them completely. X-Men suffers from the same problem. There are too many characters, with more introduced each movie, that it is impossible to spend any great deal of time with any one of them. Do so, and you take away from the central plot. Focus too much on plot, and the characters are cardboard cutouts. The first Avengers movie was the only ensemble in recent memory to actually pull off this balancing act successfully, but then again, it had five movies beforehand (Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Iron Man 2, and Captain America: The First Avenger) to lay that critical groundwork. X-Men have never had that luxury.
The movie also doesn't make a lot of sense, with characters inexplicably changing motivations (Mystique, Storm and Magneto) with no real explanation. The movie is a hodgepodge that feels like it was written on the fly. But it is fun to watch and if you put your logical mind on hold for awhile, especially the nerdling impulses to slavishly follow the comics, you may have a good time. The main character performances are fairly good, particularly Fassbender, who seems incapable of putting out a bad performance. The producers just need to stick to a good story, and the rest will work out. And the nerds have to understand the movie must be different than source material. If you want to see the exact same story, just read the comic. Movies, by their very nature will have to amend and cut stories to fit the time needs. So, that said, it's fun, a bit stupid, but generally satisfying overall. Instead of a five-course meal, it's junk food for the soul.
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