Ben Oliver

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X-Men: Apocalypse

Well, at least we can all agree the third one’s always the worst.
06 August 2017

Mild spoilers ahead

In ancient Egypt, a mutant believed to be a god is betrayed and entombed by his worshippers. In 1983, he awakens and seeks revenge on the world, looking to re-instate his position of power over mankind. The young students at Charles Xavier’s school must band together to stop him. The Egyptian mutant that is, not Charles.

Thanks to infinite amounts of time travel gimmicks, reboots and re-castings we’ve reached a point where the X-Men franchise will never die. This particular instalment is about as run-of-the-mill as you can get. You’ve seen it all before - a bad guy wants to take over the world. The mutants want to stop him. The government gets in the way.

In spite of its lack of any entertainment value or substance, the film answers a few questions about the franchise as a whole. We see a young Storm, a young Jean Grey and a young laser-eyes guy. We also get the back story on how Charles Xavier went bald, and why Magneto has anger management issues for the rest of his life.

Unless you really want the back story on characters from films that came out 15 years ago (or, spoiler alert, you’ve a Wolverine completionist) you could probably skip this one, despite James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender’s always solid performances.

Perhaps one day someone will compile a film of just the scenes with the super-speed guy. Watching him almost stop time and move shit around is always fun.