10 Reasons Why X-Men: Apocalypse Is The Worst In The First Class Trilogy

X-Men: Apocalypse is shaping up to be the worst-reviewed movie in the X-Men franchise. After 16 years of films, even taking into account The Last Stand, Apocalypse has taken the prize to be the lowest-rated entry into the series (with the exception of Wolverine spinoff Origins. But we prefer not to talk about that one). With a score of 51 on Metacritic, Apocalypse has come in at 14 points lower than First Class and 23 points below Days of Future Past. And it's absolutely justified, too, with the film coming across like a complete rush-job, wherein veteran X-director Bryan Singer and writer Simon Kinberg appear to have finally bitten off far more than they can chew. In the following article, you'll find a spoiler-free assessment of just why X-Men: Apocalypse falters so badly. From the abundant amount of plotholes to the lack of character development, here are 10 reasons why the newest X-Men film is the worst in the First Class trilogy. 10) Plotholes Everywhere The most noticeable thing about Apocalypse right off the bat is just how hole-y the story is. So many unnecessary questions are raised, like: if Apocalypse can slaughter dozens with a wave of the hand, why doesn't he just use that power to vanquish the X-Men? If Nightcrawler can use his power to take him to places he's been before, why doesn't he just teleport himself out of the fight club? And perhaps most important of all, how does Apocalypse, an Ancient Egyptian, know how to work 1980s tech? It's not just inconsistent powers that are a problem. The whole timeline has become an issue: Alex Summers is now roughly the same age as his parents are in the movie, while Quicksilver appears to be catching up with his own father, Erik Lensherr, who still appears to be in his 30s. We also have to ask what happened to Wolverine between movies that he'd end up in the hands of Col. Stryker in Apocalypse, despite him being saved by Mystique at the end of Days of Future Past. 9) Some Of The Performances Are Woeful Granted, the acting is for the most part fine, if unspectacular in X-Men: Apocalypse. The newcomers, including Tye Sheridan and Sophie Turner, do their best to complement the more established (relative) old-timers like Michael Fassbender and Oscar Isaac. However, others, like James McAvoy and Jennifer Lawrence, are simply woeful, over-acting and totally devoid of the personality they showed in previous X-films. Lawrence in particular is wooden, and quite evidently bored, having already played the same character across seven films in five years (she's the same basic "I'm no hero" heroic type in both The Hunger Games and X-Men franchises). Meanwhile others, like Nicholas Hoult and Rose Byrne, recently so memorable in Mad Max and Neighbors respectively, make hardly any impact at all. 8) Too Many Characters, Not Enough Development It's not entirely the fault of McAvoy, Lawrence et al that they're not at their best in Apocalypse. In fairness to them, they've been lumbered with the least-interesting versions of their characters yet. Much of the blame lies with Simon Kinberg's script, which packs in an enormous amount of characters and leaves little breathing room for any of them to develop. Singer and Kinberg cheekily mock Brett Ratner's unloved X-Men: The Last Stand in Apocalypse ("the third 's always the worst"), but their latest effort ironically shares one of X3's main flaws: there are just too many people at the party, and Singer and Kinberg have a hard time juggling that many characters at once. If you thought Days of Future Past was busy with characters, Apocalypse is positively bursting with them. 7) The Best Characters Are Sidelined Ask anyone who the best characters in the First Class trilogy have been, and three names will likely come up: Magneto, Quicksilver and, inevitably, Wolverine (always the people's favorite). Where are they in Apocalypse? Well, Magneto spends most of the film moping, reduced to a one-note sad baddie, and Wolverine gets a five-minute cameo, mostly so Singer can set up the next Wolverine film. While the director does at least promote Quicksilver to supporting role this time around, in the end, the film doesn't know what to do with him. Ditto for Angel and Nightcrawler, two fan-favorites that barely get ten lines between them, as well as Psylocke, who shows up looking like little more than eye candy. Instead, the film is in the hands of Oscar Isaac, James McAvoy and Jennifer Lawrence, all of whom appear to be struggling to lend any weight to the material. 6) The Period Setting Is Under-Utilized First Class approached 1962 with a swinging 60s idealism, mixed with Mad Men-style gender politics and fashions, and burgeoning Cold War tensions. Days of Future Past similarly embraced its 1970s setting, adopting a paranoid thriller sensibility, with Vietnam, Nixon and the counterculture very much part of the fabric of the movie. In First Class and Days, the period settings didn't just provide a quirky backdrop - they actually informed the movies. In Apocalypse, it's safe to say the period setting is under-utilized. There are lazy references to the 80s - a conversation about Return of the Jedi in a mall, Eurythmics on the soundtrack - that feel tacked on rather than organic. Where First Class and Days were intrinsically tied to their respective time periods, Apocalypse could be set in any time and the story wouldn't be changed much. It's quite simply a waste of one of the First Class trilogy's best features. 5) Too Much of What Happens In The Film Is Extraneous There's a strong suspicion, based on how quickly Bryan Singer and Simon Kinberg put the film together, and judging by the final product itself, that Apocalypse was made without the team having a clear plan in place for it. The whole movie reads like an early draft that went to shoot too early: under-developed characters, a bursting cast list, ample plotholes - as well as the fact that so much of the film is packed with storylines and characters it doesn't need. There's always too much going on in Apocalypse, and the worst part is that so much of it never leads anywhere. There's no need for the presence of either Moira MacTaggert or Caliban (surely Apocalypse is powerful enough to find mutants himself?), no need for Magneto's trip to Auschwitz and no need for the scene with Earth's nuclear arsenal. It's all extraneous fat, which further drafts of the script would have rightly burned off. 4) The Villain Is Botched En Sabah Nur, aka Apocalypse, is one of the most formidable foes to be found in the X-Men comics, with one of the more intriguing backstories. Unfortunately, there's not much sense of that in Apocalypse. Rather than delve into dense X-Men comic history to truly get a sense of who Apocalypse is, Kinberg and Singer have just given us a generic, cut-out super-powered bad guy. Where First Class and Days of Future Past had Kevin Bacon and Peter Dinklage as outwardly respectable but secretly ruthless zealots, Apocalypse is never so clearly defined. There's never enough time given to delineate his plan, and we never get a sense of who he is or, for that matter, what his powers are. Oscar Isaac does his best to bring En Sabah Nur to life, but the material he's working with is confused from the start. 3) Shaky CGI There's a lot of CG-based spectacle in Apocalypse. Like a Roland Emmerich movie, it's a disaster epic involving huge, heavily computer-generated action set-pieces. Unlike a Roland Emmerich movie, Apocalypse's effects aren't always so up to scratch. Say what you will about Emmerich, but he at least tries to get his CGI right even when his dull human characters come out looking like they're made of cardboard. Take Apocalypse's final act, an interminably long sequence that finds Apocalypse and Magneto trying to control the Earth's magnetic poles (don't ask why) as the X-Men attempt to stop them. Some of the worst stuff here looks almost like pre-viz footage, as Singer shows us cities being destroyed around the world and Magneto builds a giant steel city for Apocalypse. Like so much of the film, the CGI too often seems rushed or, worse, merely unfinished. 2) Bland Set Pieces Bar the numbingly lengthy, city-wrecking final set piece, Apocalypse mostly doesn't botch its action. That doesn't mean the set pieces are particularly interesting, though. Much of the action feels same-y and stale, like Singer - after four X-Men films - has begun to run out inventive ways to make his action sequences pop. Even Quicksilver's jaunt through the X-Mansion, the highlight of the film, is an inferior version of Days of Future Past's own Quicksilver scene, while Wolverine's berserker attack, another high-point, echoes another similar scene in 2003's X2. It's a sorry state of affairs when the best bits feel borrowed from superior movies, and the closest recent comparison for the final, climactic battle is Man of Steel's own ill-advised finale. 1) The Tone X-Men: First Class, you'll probably agree, is not a perfect film. What it does have in spades, however, is an unapologetic sense of fun that wasn't often found in X-Men movies previous. Days of Future Past, though much darker, continued the trend by peppering scenes with lighter moments: Wolverine waking up in 1973 and accidentally piercing a water bed with his claws, then later being accused of dropping acid in his time-travel confusion. X-Men: Apocalypse is, unfortunately, short on such moments, with one of few laughs going to the Quicksilver scene, borrowed from Days of Future Past and which feels tonally off here. The rest of the film is just dour and self-serious; it's the film that drains the fun from the First Class trilogy, with Singer and Kinberg inexplicably treating this overblown, campy blockbuster affair like it's actually some Very Serious Oscar bait.