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X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

What?!

This is the most torn I think I've ever been over a movie like this. Half of it is, well, something while the other is begging for a potential franchise destruction. You see...

The good half:
- Magneto's story up until after Apocalypse commands him to destroy Auschwitz delivers in pathos and manages to conjure up a plot point darker than anything in Dawn of Justice.
- The violence hits the limits of what 12A/PG-13 can allow. People are scorched to flesh and bones, manipulated brutally, crushed flat, impaled and even decapitated onscreen.
- The way it juggles real political and ecological conflicts is also a plus.
- You wouldn't believe that is actually Oscar Isaac.
- The very fact that Magneto destroyed Auschwitz.
- See below.

The bad half:
- Only a few of the characters are portrayed as fully developed and/or remotely interesting.
- The effects end up looking rather cheap at times, such as a terribly fake green-screen shot of Storm.
- Stan Lee's cameo is played rather gratuitously. Yes, camera, we know.
- The dialogue is cheesy and forgettable, and so is Apocalypse.
- James McAvoy gives his hammiest performance in ages.
- It just feels so goddamn by-the-numbers compared to the conflicts in Days of Future Past.

And yet, of course it's not anyone's fault this film is so inferior. Kinberg and Singer are under Hollwood studio pressure, so they already know that there's no way Days of Future past can possibly be trumped, so barely any damns are given. When they are given, however, they're some of the ballsiest damns I've witnessed in modern superhero and comic book cinema, and that says an awful lot.

The closest it does come to topping Days of Future Past is Quicksilver's glorious escapade in which he saves nearly everyone in the school from being engulfed in a blast to Eurythmics, which is one of the best things I've seen this year. There's just so much that makes me want to appreciate this film as it is rather than just an experience, which I'd say is more than watching even Civil War could give me, but there's just too much to underwhelm me for me to do so. In such cases, the meta point it managed to go for in relevance to Return of the Jedi unfortunately stands straight.