9 Ways X-Men: Apocalypse Is The Most Frustrating Comic Book Movie Of The Year

All of the three major comic book movies released in summer 2016 felt overstuffed; Civil War made it work somehow, though characters like Ant-Man and Hawkeye felt shortchanged. Batman V Superman had lots of stuff happening loudly, and none of it was very interesting.

With Apocalypse, it just feels like every random idea Singer has ever had for an X-Men movie he’s just jammed in, regardless of how it fits into the plot. So ideas he’s talked about before – a proper Wolverine berserker sequence, Cyclops discovering his powers in a school bathroom or the Dark Phoenix saga – has made it in one form or another.

The whole movie is a patchwork of scenes hastily stapled together. Characters are introduced only to disappear for age, so by the time they reappear you’ve already forgotten about them. A fair chunk of the supporting characters don’t need to be there, and the main threat of the movie – stopping Apocalypse – honestly starts to feel like another subplot.

Singer also tries to merge silly and serious tones with occasionally disastrous results – one scene involving Magneto revisiting a key location from his past is jaw-droppingly misjudged – and the more the film wears on the more it feels like Singer didn’t know what he wanted to achieve with it. Whatever it was, it certainly wasn’t telling a cohesive story.

What did you think of X-Men: Apocalypse? Were you disappointed or did it live up to the hype? Let us know in the comments below.