I give X-Men: Apocalypse 7.0 out of 10.
The good:
Michael Fassbender is still the best thing in the First Class continuity. I wish if anything he was given more to do.
The bad:
James McAvoy's Professor X trajectory from First Class to Apocalypse in my opinion continues downward. I can imagine the Xavier from First Class one day becoming the Professor X seen in the first X-Men. The Xavier from Days of Future Past takes a huge step backward, but I could excuse that if the events of DoFP become the catalyst for him to eventually become the Xavier from the first X-Men movie. But the Xavier in Apocalypse is really hollow to me. He's a dreamer, but not a leader. Even Beast doesn't fully buy into his blind optimism, and he's wholly unprepared for basically anything. And the way the movie ends all but demotes him from the "strongest mind in the world" that Patrick Stewart's Xavier is always acknowledged to be (even in DoFP, and in X-Men Magneto always seems to have both respect and almost fear of Charles' power) to a second class power not on the same level as Msgneto. I understand why they did it, but they didn't need to: Erik is not made to look weaker just to make Apocalypse look stronger.
One tag-protected spoiler I have to get off my chest:
Spoiler for Hidden:
It would have been so much better if Charles could only deadlock Apocalypse and he called Jean to put him over the top. It would make Charles less of a punching bag, it would give Apocalypse a reason to need his power, it would preserve his status as a legitimately powerful person, it would portray him better as a real fighter that was willing to fight to protect his students, it would make the theme of team work actually make sense, and if they are heading where we all assume they are heading then it makes Charles a legitimate player to try to control Jean-as-Phoenix. It would have even given them an opportunity to stage a better fight between Charles and Apocalypse on the astral plane.
Instead, Charles really didn't stop Apocalypse at all. Jean, Storm, and Erik did, entirely by themselves. The only thing Charles did was avoid getting taken over long enough for the rest of them to fully engage Apocalypse. At no point does he really "lead" anyone, much less the X-Men. Nothing in the McAvoy Xavier looks like it has the potential to become the Stewart Xavier in the future.
The just plain weird:
If you grew up on the X-Men in the 70s and 80s, you might get the sense that Simon Kinberg and Brian Singer binge-read the X-Men comics from the 80s and made a Chris Claremont checklist. What did Storm look like in the 80s? Check. What did the kids do when they weren't fighting bad guys? Check. Any memorable supporting characters? Caliban? Okay, check. What did he do? Wait, he did what with Kitty Pryde? Well, she ain't in this one: we'll work on that.
I half expected the Starjammers to show up in a post-credits stinger scene: that would have basically blacked out my Chris Claremont X-Men bingo card. And the ending of the movie felt like the biggest check mark of all. I didn't mind it, but it did feel like pandering upon reflection.
Overall:
Given Brian Singer's strengths with the previous X-Men movies, and the strengths of the First Class reboot, I found Apocalypse a bit disappointing overall. Far too much lingering scenes of CGI-powers, not enough focus on characters. In the first X-Men movie the bulk of the movie focused on character interactions. Charles and Erik (that one scene sold the entire movie for me right there). Logan and Rogue. Scott, Jean, and Logan. Xavier and Logan. Even Magneto and Senator Kelly, Kelly and Storm. If you didn't know anything about the X-Men, you quickly got to know all these characters and basically where they were coming from. First Class reboots the movies with a focus on the triangle of Charles, Erik, and Raven, but also includes side stories between Raven and Hank, Charles and Moira. In Apocalypse you just don't get any of that. There are brief flashes of contact but none which advance any of the relationships between the characters. It is as if Apocalypse is the final act of a larger story that has no internal story of its own.
Unfortunately, Apocalypse had the bad fortune to come out after Civil War. None of its flaws would be any less flawed if it came out before Civil War, but Civil War does prove those flaws are not inevitable.
The movie is watchable, and the action is fun, and the mandatory Quicksilver scene is good, but it all felt shallow to me: not just in an absolute sense but compared to previous X-Men movies. In fact, I dare say that less is going on in Apocalypse than in Last Stand, and that's saying something (granted, a lot that's going on in Last Stand is awful, but it is happening nonetheless).
