X-Men: Apocalypse - 10 Reasons It's Not As Bad As The Critics Are Saying
2. A Silly, Over-The-Top Mess Of A Movie? That's Kind Of The Point!
In this era of dour comic book movies like Batman v Superman, a film which pretty much depressed everyone who went out to see it, we should come together to celebrate a film like X-Men: Apocalypse - one which is purposely silly and fun and perhaps even camp, and doesn't bother to take itself seriously for a second.
Still, a hefty amount of critics seem to have missed that X-Men: Apocalypse is supposed to be dumb fun; Bryan Singer clearly isn't taking the whole thing seriously, so why should we? X-Men might well be the only comic book franchise that permits this sort of scatty, balls to the wall mania, free from the constraints of continuity that plague the films in, say, the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Because nobody cares about the X-Men franchise in the way they do the MCU or its DC equivalent... the series is - and always has been - a hodgepodge of styles and contradictions, and that's kind of what makes it special. It's the only comic book movie franchise that has been afforded the chance to take frequent risks and to be outright weird, with little to no consequences.
The X-Men movies therefore offer their directors a unique playground, which means that silly fun is almost always the best path to take. To deride the film for being ridiculous and overwrought and packed with continuity errors is to miss what is kind of great about the franchise: it's not a weakness, it's a strength.