X-Men: Apocalypse

Oh, I remember when I had a movie. It was three months ago and it was awesome! It had guns, violence and X-Men! Now the X-Men are back on big screens with their ninth overall funfest, X-Men: Apocalypse! In 3-D!

Deadpool, how did you get back in here?

I let myself in. Now, if you excuse me I have a movie to summarize.

But...

Stop me if you heard this one. Big bad guy gets shut away dozens of hundreds of years ago. And he comes back to life in modern day. And by modern day, I mean 1983. And this guy wants to rule the world. Classy.

OK, the fill in gaps bad guy is (looks at notes) En Sabah Nur (Oscar Isaac), the world's first mutant. He was the big blue cheese of Ancient Egypt until he got dethroned and entombed. Insert nameless cultists who bring him back to life in 1983. The first thing he does is hire four mutants to be his Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Those are Storm (Alexandra Shipp), Psylocke (Olivia Munn), Angel (Ben Hardy) and, back again, Magneto (Michael Fassbender)! They're gonna take over the world, of course!

Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), who almost caused the bad future in Days of Future Past, but stopped Magneto from doing the same ('tis complicated), is in the movie too! And so is Cyclops (Tye Sheridan) and Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) and Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and Quicksilver (Evan Peters) and Beast (Nicholas Hoult) and ...

What're they all doing in the movie?!

Being awesome. But that's beside the point. 

En Sabah Nur wants to spread his word and he thinks Professor X (James McAvoy) is the guy to do it. The X-Men, Mystique included, want to keep the Earth intact, so they oppose him. Simple.

OK, outside! (Shoves Deadpool outside)

But I wanna review it! (Door slams on Deadpool) Ow.

It sounds convoluted, doesn't it? But what saves the film is its characters. The above mentioned characters each have time to impact the plot or make an impression. Quicksilver and Nightcrawler are welcome comic relief, Cyclops and Jean Grey find time to develop a good relationship, while Magneto's storyline is genuinely emotional. En Sabah Nur was a serviceable bad guy. And finally, Professor X and Mystique's stances on Mutant civil rights are understandable. It even finds time for humor. Jubilee (Lana Condor) gets promoted from background mutant to speaking role, but she was under-utilized.

Quicksilver, who was under-utilized in Days of Future Past, has a bigger part here. He has two scenes to showcase his powers, both of which were funny and awesome. The visual effects department once again visualizes a nifty array of mutant powers. The production designers' best work is En Sbah Nur's pyramids, each in Ancient and modern times. The makeup effects create some nifty hairdos and blue mutants. Still, some characters who should be almost 50 (i.e. Magneto and Professor X) don't look the part.

X-Men Apocalypse is nowhere near as cataclysmic as Fantastic Four, but it may inspire bad memories of X-Men: The Last Stand. The mutant characters and their action kept me interested for 144 minutes. We can hope some "pointless" bits in this one will pay off in later installments. Fox can have the franchise as long as it knows what it's doing.