Erik Lensherr, when done right, can be one of the best-conceived characters in comic books. In Apocalypse, hes reduced to:
working in a steel mill
having a wife and daughter whose sole narrative purpose is to be victims
angry-crying
parroting lines from the previous films
destroying the world by tearing apart its metallic core or
something along those lines
Very ham-fisted, very redundant and in general it felt like a cheap imitation of the character we got in first class and DOFP. This once magnificent character is reduced to a cliché. The effort spent establishing the comradery and conflict between him and Xavier is twisted into laughably simplistic point-counterpoint crap about hope. All of the subtlety of the ideological/political rift between those two men on display in the previous two films is gone.
They botched Charles too. They couldn't decide whether he should be the reflective patriarch or a goofy quippy guy. That balance made sense some couple decades ago in First Class, but when Xavier is, presumably, intended to be in his forties, it just doesnt work. He's supposed to be Patrick Stewart professor X by then. That version of the character might have had a few lines of wry wit and dry humor but he was never bumbling and goofy.
Cyclops. They cant decide if hes a smug jock, an ungainly nerd or a scared teenager grappling with his powers. His brother dies, he's sad about it, then it's never mentioned or referenced again. Sloppy.
Nightcrawler serves as unfunny comic relief and a convenient plot device to zap our characters to where they need to be. Just remembering the quality of Alan Cummings take on the character makes me sad. Lets move on.
I get that with Apocalypse, you're going to want his four horsemen but to have 3 of them be characters that aren't previously established makes the movie feel way overstuffed.
The costumes look like like belong on knock-off action figures.
Rushed, truncated characterization all around. Giving Quicksilver the motivation of wanting to get to know his dad is smart, but the film handles it so clumsily that I couldnt help but roll my eyes every time it resurfaced. Again, had there been an adjoining film between DOFP and Apocalypse this mightve been convincing, but instead its representative of a film where every character gets an arc no matter how briefly or poorly handled. Because thats what modern screenwriting demands.
The film lacks a protagonist for God's sake lol
Sloppy writing reliant on coincidences, unfocused story, overstuffed, dimensionless characters, pretty terrible CGI, an awful set piece at the end that couldn't look more fakey if they tried, rushed, perfunctory narrative beats and arcs... They did a great job in First class and DOFP of tying the characters and their kind to the government, the CIA, to society and to the world at large, making the whole thing feel grounded, authentic, real. In Apocalypse, the gov seemingly doesn't exist. Same with just...society as a whole. I think we got one shot of people panicking when the nukes were launched. That's it. These characters and mutants in general seemingly exist in a vacuum.
The sad thing is, All this movie needed to be was decent and it still would have made for the best trilogy ever just by virtue of the other two films being so strong.
Also Sophie Turner was gawd awful and her american accent was probably one of the worst I've heard in any movie this decade.
