“X-Men: Apocalypse” is the end of the second trilogy of X-Men centric movies, so if you are not onboard this particular train by now, this is not the movie to try to jump on, lest you don’t mind watching movies in which most of the character development has already been done in prior installments and references are constantly made to previously told stories. This is a culmination of serialized storytelling, and if you haven’t seen any other X-Men movie but watch this one for some reason, that is like just watching the season finale of the second season of a television show you’ve never seen. Sure lots of stuff happens, and it seems exciting, but does it mean anything without the years of build up?

The weird thing is that this movie is actually doing two things – it both ends this trilogy of movies (started with “X-Men: First Class” in 2011 and followed by “X-Men: Days of Future Past” in 2014), and also introduces new, younger versions of characters who will be the focus of the next X-Men movies. So certain characters (or at least certain actors playing these characters) are having their last hurrah while others are fresh faces and get to do just enough to set them up for whatever comes after this. And rest assured, there will be more of these, because why would 20th Century Fox ever stop making them? It is the only comic book franchise they do even close to right and which makes them any money (just look at how well they did with Fantastic Four and Daredevil). So get ready for high school Cyclops and Game of Thrones Jean Grey and twenty year old Nightcrawler and so on and so forth.Continue Reading …