Saw Apocalypse it was a lot better than I suspected but I expected it to be so, so bad.
It didn't change the main problem I have with the new trilogy (so far) which is that Mistique gets such a central role and they don't build any momentum but I think that the former is out of the hands of the director and the latter is just his innate style.
The characters introduced were unfortunately almost as bad as I feared, the guy playing nightcrawler had almost zero manual dexterity with his three fingers because I assume he was wearing a prop glove which was weird to see, him doing backflips and teleporting this way and that but can't operate a button convincingly. If they were trying to make Cyclops more of a rebel, that's not a direction that I think they should have gone with the character but then I'm overly critical of him since he's one of my favourite heroes of all time. Angel, Storm and Psylocke, despite being on the movie posters had so little screen time it seemed almost a waste of Alexandra Shipp and Olivia Munns acting which was good when you did get to see it. In the end they could really have been any mutants.
The things I really liked about the movie were the continuation of the relationship between X and Magneto, Storms origin which is faithful to the comics, the Wolverine scene and Quicksilver being Quicksilver.
Unfortunately while the over-arching story is fine if not great, a lot of the smaller plots are either left hanging or just peter out into nothing. I don't understand why Moira was involved in this movie at all, Mistique was hunting Magneto anyway and would have caught up with him and therefore Apocalypse as well in the end anyway. Havok was an awkward character to have around when you're introducing Cyclops but even so just having him die when the audience has no real attachment to him fell really flat.
Despite this I feel like the movie was actually quite emotional, especially the scenes with X and Jean towards the end, which surprised me. Perhaps it's always been the theme of people outside regular society learning to use what they do have and in doing so becoming more human which resonates but more likely it's McAvoys look of desperation who sort of stole the show again unlike co-star Fassbender who gave his weakest performance of the three movies in my book, his acting seriously hampered by a wholly predictable subplot.
To be continued...