8 Reasons X-Men: Apocalypse Doesn't Deserve The Hate

Ensemble films are notoriously difficult to pull off, and comic book films have often struggled with ensembles. Numerous critics decried Zack Snyder’s inability to make every character in Batman V Superman meaningful, and Joss Whedon has been repeatedly hit with the same criticisms with the Avengers films.

With this in mind, Apocalypse deserves some admiration for the way it incorporates new characters into the fold while making sure that the older characters do not lose their centrality to the plot.

The conflict of ideologies between Professor X and Magneto is still the key narrative driver, but rehashes of their past are thankfully avoided. In a similar way, Apocalypse’s origin is mercifully brief, and while this admittedly leaves a bit of confusion about just what it is exactly he can and can’t do, this confusion is preferable to an overlong origin story.

The film spends a surprising amount of time on the development of fresher characters like Cyclops, Jean Grey, Nightcrawler, and Storm. Now, while all these characters have featured in the earlier films, they haven’t really been the stars. This time around, though, they get pulled very significantly into the fold, and their own individual journeys buffer the central plot without detracting from it.

Helping them out with the heavy lifting are other characters that we have seen in previous films, but whose stature is increased this time around, such as Beast, Rave, and Quicksilver.

It's a clever, and well-crafted strategy that makes the different narrative strands flow together. It’s not perfectly executed, but it’s one of the better attempts at creating an ensemble in the genre to date.