<Review by: Daylynn DeSouza>

Directed by Bryan Singer. Starring James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Oscar Isaac, Nicholas Hoult, Rose Byrne, Olivia Munn, Evan Peters, Sophie Turner, Tye Sheridan, Lucas Till, Alexandra Shipp, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Josh Helman

Running Time: 2 hours 16 mintues

The ninth film in the X-Men franchise (including Deadpool) X-Men: Apocalypse is the best of the newer X-Men films (excluding Deadpool). Although it’s not without its faults it adapts a fairly popular comic book arc into a decent movie.

The movie is set in 1983, 10 years after the events of the last movie. The story revolves around Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac) the first ever mutant and also the most powerful one who along with his four ‘horsemen’ mutants seeks to create a new world order by destroying the one we have now and it’s up to the X-Men to stop him. Now while the timeline of the X-Men movies has been damaged beyond repair in regards to what is part of the story and what isn’t, that is by no means the fault of this movie, rather the movies that preceded it and followed X-Men and X2.

There are a quite a few fun throwbacks to the 80s including the opening credits of cult show Knight Rider on the TV in one scene and a Star Trek Original Series episode playing on the TV that is relevant to the ‘false gods’ story of the film (not everyone will get that it’s a Star Trek episode, but someone on the film certainly likes the franchise since they did a nod to it in X-Men: First Class too). We also get a few emotional moments, some brilliant chemistry and character development for Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender).

Quicksilver (Evan Peters) gets more scenes as incredible as his scene in X-Men: Days of Future Past and a picture perfect Psylock (Olivia Munn) who finally made it into a live action movie – although her interesting ninja assassin background isn’t shown – still shines as one of the baddies in this film. Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee) makes a fun addition to the bunch of good mutants.  The emotionally charged scenes with Michael Fassbender and his new family are pretty moving too.

Visually the film is an overwhelming CGI festival of destruction, carnage, brutal deaths and mutant powers (including a final battle in a destroyed cityscape with plenty of flying debris as well as a return to a few familiar locations from the original X-Men Trilogy. We also get a whole new set of mutants including younger versions of some that we’ve previously seen on screen. Some even switch sides.

Cyclops (Tye Sheridan) and Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) are done justice to by the story cementing them as the future leaders of the X-Men. Not much can be said about the other characters except that by the end of the movie nearly everybody is wearing a costume that is very similar to their comic book costumes and they all have their own moments to shine in the movie. Apocalypse sort of fails as a strong villain; why do they always think they need to make them all blue with weird make-up to make a good villain?

The post credits scene is more than ‘Sinister’ in it’s set up for the next villain and a new hero and I enjoyed that and am actually looking forward to what the future holds for this wonky time lined franchise.

Overall, this movie is not a thinking persons movie because honestly it’ll just give you a headache if you try to keep the overall timeline straight but it is entertaining and it’s definitely worth a watch and since the movie is a visual spectacle with tonnes of CGI and SFX go all out and watch it in the best 3D you can.