Underrated X-men film

One of the many summer blockbusters of the year that seems to suffer from a surprisingly poor critical reaction, it's 'X-men Apocalypse' starring everyone's favorite outsiders. The story follows Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) as he and his students from his school of mutants have to fight off an ancient godlike mutant Apocalypse before he (You know) takes over/destroys the world. Also, Xavier's rival Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto (Michael Fassbender) joins forces with Apocalypse after he loses his family. Can our heroes save the day? Is this movie REALLY bloated and super long for such a basic superhero story?

The answer to both is 'yes' but the movie isn't as hard to follow or as lazily formulaic as I pointed out, the major source of this film's success for me is that it does contain a lot of stories and subplots, but it manages to cram all this material in without being too hard to follow. Coming in at 2 hours and 27 minutes long the story elements mentioned are all given an appropriate amount of screen time. You understand why Magneto reverts to being evil after a long life of peace, you know that this Apocalypse fellow means business, and the heroes that we focus on are developed enough as characters for us to see recognizable personality traits that allow us to sympathize with them.

James McAvoy and Fassbender are wonderful in their roles and both of them are the best characters in the movie aside from Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique. Fassbender does redeem himself near the end turning on the main villain and comes across as a tragic character for the involuntary manslaughter of his family after his mutant powers are discovered by the authorities. McAvoy comes across as a rather classy and charming young man who has an infinite amount of wisdom and human will. There are times in the movie where you're fearing for McAvoy's life but his character's intelligence, patience, and toughness ultimately save his life. The rest of the main heroes in this movie are good but nothing particularly noteworthy.

The visual effects in this movie are astounding, if anyone watching this movie wanted to use CGI extensively in their movie this is a great film to take notes on. 99% of the effects look VERY convincing unlike the video game looking crap we saw in 'Jurassic World'

My biggest criticism of the movie does stem from the fact that the villain with a name like 'Apocalypse' isn't very memorable and is borderline bland. His powers are intimidating, he does try to take over Professor Xavier's body but outside of that he's just like every other villain who wants to destroy the world and rebuild it his way. He has NO personality and doesn't come across as a scary or threatening character. Perhaps if he were more like Ultron from 'Avengers 2' and had more of a sick/twisted charm to him he'd be much more disturbing and would stick in the viewer's mind a little more.

The movie does also take a 5 minute detour with Wolverine popping up to help the other X-Men escape from a military facility that takes up about 15 minutes in addition to the cameo. This whole instance with Wolverine was obviously added in there just to please the fans and it does. But there's no point to it and doesn't further or strengthen the story in any way.

All the whole the movie does such a good job at entertaining us that these flaws are a smidge easier for me to forgive the movie. Even if the villain was completely wasted and in no way shape or form lives up to his name, it's an underrated summer blockbuster so see it if you haven't already.