More superheroes, more fighting among themselves, more mayhem.  Surely American filmmaking has more to offer than this.  Not that this is all bad; Bryan Singer’s film, the eighth, I believe, in Marvel’s X-Men universe, offers a great deal of action and the usual platitudes about friendship, teamwork, choosing good over evil, and so on.  Almost two-and-a-half hour’s worth.  Hopefully fans are getting their money’s worth — I did not.

While I find too many similarities between this film and The Avengers: Age of Ultron, I like this film’s villain, En Sabah Nur (Apocalypse) much more than Ultron.  The “Four Horsemen” aspect gives Apocalypse’s villainy much greater gravitas, especially since his helpers are mutants themselves.  What doesn’t work is why Apocalypse is so intent on destroying civilization from the ground up (quite literally, using Magneto’s power); the idea that “the strongest survivors” would band with him to create a new world is simply absurd.

Plus, the movie itself is riddled with inconsistencies, not only within itself, but within the X-Men universe.  With all the time jumps this series has made it is difficult, if not impossible, to know exactly when things take place.  Some of the characters have new performers — Halle Berry, James Marsden and Famke Janssen are out, in favor of Alexandra Shipp, Tye Sheridan and Sophie Turner.  And other characters have disappeared altogether.  It’s tough to follow without a scorecard.

Ultimately I just didn’t care.  The destruction of the world, through Magneto’s power, is initially impressive, yet it isn’t visually sustainable.  What happens to all the metal pulled from the ground?; there has to be more of it than the streams in the air that are shown.  Visually the movie cannot deliver the chaos it promises.  And it’s a mistake during the climax to decelerate the action down to slow motion multiple times for emphasis and shots of superheroes crying.  This is a prime example of a film being overproduced and overwrought.  But it will make boatloads of money and the inexorably confusing X-Men tales will continue.  The really scary part is that someday, perhaps someday soon, Twentieth Century Fox will start from scratch and we’ll have to endure this all over again.  ☆ ☆.  30 May 2016.