If you find yourself looking at your watch an hour into “X-Men Apocalypse,” you’re not alone. This 2-hour-and-16-minute marathon of mutant-generated destruction starts well, but runs into a very familiar problem that afflicts most superhero films roughly 60 minutes in: lots of explosions and mayhem, but little real tension.
This is surprising because director Bryan Singer is at the helm. Mr. Singer kickstarted Marvel’s conquest of the multiplex with “X-Men” in 2000, a movie that expertly balanced the angst of being a young mutant with the responsibility of saving a world that persecutes you for being different.
Starring: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence.
Rating: PG-13 for violence, some profanity, major destruction, wanton murder of ordinary humans.
Mr. Singer usually has a feel for brooding heroes, but it appears to have escaped him despite this film’s many well-done action sequences and surprisingly coherent story given everything stuffed into this movie.
The story begins 5,000 years ago in ancient Egypt. A god-like mutant that calls himself Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac) is in the midst of receiving more energy during an ancient ceremony when an assassination plot by mere mortals foils his plans.
Buried under a massive pyramid, Apocalypse lapses into “sleep” until 1983 when an excavation in Cairo rouses him. He is not impressed with how the world has gotten along without him and embarks on a plan to cleanse the planet and recreate it in his image. To do that, he needs to assemble his “Four Horsemen” — four mutants to serve as his heralds and angels of death.
Fresh from another tragedy in which his loved ones are killed because of bigotry, Magneto (Michael Fassbender) is the most powerful and embittered of Apocalypse’s recruits. Storm (Alexandria Shipp) is recruited from the streets of Cairo where she is a thief in the market. Angel (Ben Hardy) and Psylocke (Olivia Munn) round out Apocalypse’s posse.
Meanwhile, Professor X (James McAvoy) and Hank McCoy/Beast (Nicholas Hoult) are training the first generation of mutant heroes when Havok (Lucas Till) arrives on campus with his younger brother Cyclops (Tye Sheridan).
Cyclops is fascinated by Jean Grey (Sophie Turner), a powerful telepath who appears second only to Professor X in her abilities. She also has strange, recurring dreams about the end of the world that are a precursor to a future Phoenix drama.
Soon Apocalypse is in a world-spanning conflict with the only beings who have the power to frustrate his plans. The destruction of Professor X’s mansion provides the perfect opportunity to display Quicksilver’s (Evan Peters) ability to move impossibly fast while evacuating the students. It is another crowd-pleasing scene.
The young team’s leader on the ground is Raven/Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), a former shape-shifting villain who became a hero to all mutants after the events of “X-Men: Days of Future Past.”
Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee) rounds out this reboot of the X-Men’s launch, though there is no Colossus or Kitty Pryde in sight. As for you-know-who with the unbreakable claws, well, stay tuned.
“X-Men Apocalypse” would be considered a perfectly acceptable superhero movie if far more satisfying movies in the genre didn’t already exist. It doesn’t feel consequential enough to justify the level of destruction visited upon humanity thanks to the machinations of Apocalypse.
The biggest problem with Mr. Singer’s overstuffed superhero melodrama is that it comes too soon on the heels of “Captain America: Civil War,” a superior Marvel superhero film made by a rival studio that never gets lost in its parade of spandex, villainous intrigue and back story.
Though Mr. Singer tries to keep it light, the accumulated weight of continuity problems, reconciling timelines and nearly two decades of history for the X-Men franchise makes for a messy, though crisply shot superhero drama. Is it better than “Batman v. Superman?” Yes, but that’s not saying much. It is not as good as “X-Men: Days of Future Past,” its immediate predecessor that was arguably Mr. Singer’s best film since “The Usual Suspects.”
There will probably be more X-Men movies as long as they continue to make boatloads of money. The pool of international fanboys who will flock to the multiplexes to see this film in its opening weekend can only keep it afloat for so long before word of mouth catches up to it. This is a superhero end-of-the-world movie that feels like it really should be the end of the line.
At the critics screening I attended, there were no post-credit scenes hinting at the next installment, but that may have changed.
Tony Norman: tnorman@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1631.
First Published: May 26, 2016, 4:00 a.m.
