X-Men: Not an Apocalypse

My family went to see X-Men: Apocalypse the other night.  We went in with low expectations because we were not fans of the comic books that focused on this villain.* And our expectations were exceeded, mostly because the movie had far more light and fun than the overly dark DC movies despite being about the end of humanity.

*  Days of Future Past was a decent movie, but had a more difficult challenge since the comic book story was so very terrific.  

Spoilers below the break:

It turns that all Marvel-based productions, whether produced by Marvel studios or not, are more fun than DC based stuff in the movies (TV is something else entirely).

Oscar Isaacs did what he could do with a lousy character--old superpowerful mutant wants to destroy humanity.  Meh.  Not sure why he would want to rule over a destroyed planet, but whatever.  The four horses ranged from great to meh.  Olivia Munn as Psylocke had only a small role, but she did great stuff with it and realized the character nicely.  This version of Storm is ok, but again had not much to do.  Angel?  Meh. 

The fun parts were the good guys: Quicksilver stole his scenes big time with more fun super-fast stuff.  This time, the stakes were far higher since he was saving the entire population of the X-mansion, with heaps of silliness in the process.  The younger mutants--Jean Grey, Scott Summers, Kurt Wagner (heaps more fun Nightcrawler stuff here)--were interesting and then one of them was specutacular (I whooped when I saw the Phoenix!).  Too little Jubilee.  The Alex Summers stuff was most confusing since he is much older than Scott? 

The older folks?  Fassbender was great as Magneto as always, and his role here made sense.  I liked that J-Law/Mystique was not as central as she was in the earlier movies.  I would love to see an X-movie without either of the two, since there is more to the X-villains than these two (although I am not a fan of that which was hinted at the end of the move--Mr. Sinister--yuck cubed).

Not sure how Wolvie ended up in the Canadian Rockies since he was in the hands of Mystique at the end of the previous movie (we re-watched Days of Future Past last night). 

I am not sure how I would rate this set of three X-movies as First Class was best, Days was not bad but could not match the material, and Apoc exceeded its material but was based on a dumb story.  Captain America: Civil War is still the best comic book movie of the season.

Alex/Havok?  We will miss you.