X-Men: Apocalypse (2016)

“Well, at least we can all agree the third one's always the worst...!

 Yet again an X-Men film that isn't supposed to be all that great turns out to be pretty damn good viewing. Oh, I know that the continuity has been pretty dodgy anyway and at this point they just give up and blatantly contradict stuff about all kinds of characters. It's also awkward having two alternate casts, the less expensive of which we see here. But it's nice to get an X-Men film where Scott gets to be a likeable hero for once. It's also nice tht Wolverine, rather than hogging the limelight as usual, only gets a Weapon X cameo.

Apocalypse is a solid villain, with  suitably epic backstory and oodles of power. The film has metatextual fun with its 1983 setting, hence the line above, ostensibly about Return of the Jedi but, well, you know. It’s also fun utilising the freedom to make characters like Angel (him off EastEnders), Psylocke and even Storm be baddies for a bit. There’s the obligatory “how Charles lost his hair” bit. Of course there is. There are the obligatory philosophical scenes with Charles, Eric and Raven, but not too much. But most of the time it’s what we want to see: cool set pieces. And few are cooler than Quicksilver, even if he is dead in Marvel’s other celluloid universe. This film is quite simply just fun to watch. The timeline  and cobrinuity may be utterly broken but the film makes the right decision to ignore all that and just go with it. Quite right too.

Is it just me, though, or are we all fed up of Colonel William bloody Stryker...?