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.