X-Men: Apocalypse

I didn't expect that. So many good moments and actors drowned in such a bland story... And also directed by Bryan Singer. If only he'd made a standalone movie with the (totally awesome) Weapon X instead of this hastily cobbled together sequel that shouldn't even be compared to the first two or Days of Future Past..... Oh dear. The villain sucks, the plot has almost no overlap and the relationships between the characters are hardly interesting (yet that's what I've always enjoyed most about X-Men) and the whole thing is mostly a parade of gimmicks interspersed with something worth mentioning here and there. I was downright bored by the multi-destructive ending, and I'm actually disappointed to the point of being angry at how they managed to dilute the already diluted X-Men cinematic universe even more. (19/05/2016)

I didn’t lose any hair from it, but if I could erase this film from my memory, I'd do it immediately. It's nice that Singer doesn't use the joke about a threesome in a film where nothing really works. But compared to this mess, it looks like the work of a demigod. I experience the greatest moments of regret and helplessness in the character of Eric, for whom Singer and the rest prepared one of the worst rebirth scenes ever seen in comics (The Birds meets Polish Robin Hood). The casting of the new faces had to take place under the slogan "find the actor with the least amount of charisma". The crown is set by the "red jewel" of the film, the new Jean Gray, who resembles the bullied Mana from high school. One can't even feel bad for Oscar Isaac, because his mask allows him only one grimace (an angry overbite). What next? A bloated runtime that reflects the problem of many other blockbusters - they are awkwardly looking for an alibi for the final battle, in which the characters behave according to mysterious mechanics. Not that you can't justify the twists in retrospect, but the thin manure beforehand doesn't justify it. I'm glad Wolverine got his forest jogging - I wanted to run with him and leave the stuffed dogs far behind me. If only the film rewarded me with a spoiled visual, but almost everything here feels artificial. Remember how the other X-Men built a world that mattered? Characters who carried stories and weren't just hangers for super-abilities? Here, there is only effective enchanting - a fart transforms into an even bigger purple fart. I firmly hope that Bryan has finished building his shapeless pyramid for good. (07/01/2017)

A film without charisma. It doesn't bore or annoy, but everything that takes place in it is, in keeping with the more intimate psychological feel of its predecessors, simply a screw-up. Nobody expected such a big story cliché and an absolute inclination towards the digitally overstuffed Snyder manuscript from Singer, and the exhausted plot extensions in the form of introducing "new" recruits are not only detrimental to the dubiously tuned script, which completely lacks any attempt at emotionality or creating strong bonds between the characters, but also to the stars themselves, who don't get much space and, more importantly, don't get much to play with – yes, even Fassbender, whose performance is traditionally precise, of course, but the ambivalence of his character, until recently the main driving force of the saga, also feels like a thematic encore with a minimum shelf-life date of Future Past. And I'm afraid the whole series has been given the same label. It's nice to look at, the music is great, Jennifer Lawrence gets prettier with each film, and there's a pleasing room for humour represented once again by the delectable Quiksilver, but these just aren't the X-Men we like. (20/05/2016)

Days of Future Past was already a harbinger of future total shit and incomprehensible creative decline, and, unfortunately, Age of Apocalypse is full of that. All the things we loved about the X-Men – the characters, the relationships, the connection to reality – are missing here and have been replaced by the classic comic-book elements of Marvel: a CGI mess and a constant change of locations that is supposed to evoke a sort of build-up of the plot. There are only a few really good scenes that will resonate though – primarily almost everything with Fassbender and a minute of Wolverine, unless you count Jennifer Lawrence in a sexy purple costume, or a few nice visual effects that just copy what we've seen better/more sparingly used in previous episodes. The gamble on youth didn't pay off and neither did the super villain, who, surprisingly, wants to destroy the world – something we haven’t seen yet. (11/09/2016)

The last instalment, which was about alternative pasts, realities, futures and future pasts including the past future, annoyed me so much that I didn’t even feel like watching the next instalment called Apocalypse. I was discouraged by the fact that the whole universe around the X-Men is awfully asymmetrical and has no logic in it. In addition, the two-and-a-half-hour footage is also not easy to swallow. Especially since when hearing the word X-Men, I currently think of a number of swear words. Nevertheless, I gave Apocalypse a chance and I must admit that I was very pleasantly surprised. While the director does not bother with the logic of the story and feeds the audience with one nonsense after another, it does no harm to the relatively simple premise, and at least it allows the individual characters to develop, which is nice. There is a significant number of them. I consider the scene where Quicksilver saves the whole academy in slow motion to be the highlight of the movie. It was truly flawless, and it was then that I realize that this instalment is not actually bad at all. Until then, I was quite undecided, because this film definitely doesn’t interest you with the story. And that’s the whole point. In the end, I realized that I was not into the story at all, but rather into the individual characters, which really surprised me and pleased me at the same time. Finally something from the comic book world that I care about. Let’s just hope that they won’t disappoint the next time, as my feelings after X-Men: First Class were pretty similar… (07/04/2017)