X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

Yeah, its not a masterpiece but its not some Bat Nipple shitshow the edge lords are making it sound like, either. Its slightly behind DoFP, so if you liked that movie you will enjoy this one a fair amount. Its main flaws were a lack of exposition on the main villain, JLaw hogging screen time while phoning it in, lack of real use of the 80s era in the main narrative, and having too much cast bloat. Main plusses were having an actual external big bad guy, Fassbender's acting, Quicksilver, and the mental battle at the end was well done. In fact, a better ending would have been to have Prof X win that fight and have them bury him under the capstone, again, instead of Phoenix Deus Exing the shit out of it. Then at least, you could have made a nod to 80s issues by having a MAD situation between mutants and the rest of the world, i.e. "Prof X is the only dude to beat this guy and if you fuck with us we will let him loose again" type of thing. Main reason I liked DoFP more was it made a more effective use of the 70s.

As a star Trek Nerd, this is not Trek 5. There was no naked Uhura dance scene on the planet of galactic peace, no Spock sniper scoping god with a Bird of Prey, and Apoc was bribing people with offers of power and vengeance (vs Sybok being a religious nut who actually thought he was helping people by removing their painful memories). A better comparison would be Samuel L Jackson's character in Kingsman who basically recruited already powerful people by offering them the means to be among the survivors when he brought down his culling. To be fair, Sybok's motivation was actually more clear and understood than Apoc's was in this movie, which is one of its primary flaws.

They definitely needed more screen time of Apoc making his case to people. The rare instances they did were some of the better parts of the movie. Its especially important with an all powerful entity that the story be stronger and the dialog spot on or you end up with the same issues Superman stories have. When either your protagonist or antagonist is basically omnipotent, your story can't center around fighting because it is basically a forgone conclusion. That's why I wish they had gone Phoenix and Prof X teaming up to mind fuck him while Mags drops the capstone on him to trap him again. It would have been a much better ending and a better 80s allegory than what they ended with. There was definitely a better movie in there that got lost in the editing process and I suspect that the extended versions will end up containing a lot more dialog and less CGI action wankfests, much like the Rogue edition of DofP did. I liked it for what it was and its still better than any of the pre-First Class movies.

Oh, I forgot, there was something else good! Except it was actually bad, but I liked it because I'm a metalhead from the 80s.

They played Metallica's Four Horsemen when he recruited Angel, which is one of my favorite songs of all time. Except if you aren't into metal it probably sounded really out of place.

They also listed Venom's Countess Bathory earlier in the film, but I must have missed it somehow, so while it is an awesome song I can't say if it was used well in the movie or not.