Saw X-Men: Apocalypse last night and had a lot of fun with it. Here are my brief thoughts.

NO SPOILERS.

Don’t believe the negative buzz. It’s a solid movie. Not “great”, and certainly nowhere near Captain America: Civil War, but miles above BvS (which admittedly isn’t saying much). It’s a generally well-done and fun movie. It has the courage to eschew the normal action movie formula by resisting the urge to have a huge action scene every twenty minutes. Its first real action scene after the prologue is more of a comedic spectacle than a real action sequence, so it’s first REAL action scene doesn’t happen until well into the second half of the movie — and yet it’s never dull and always engaging. Good on Bryan Singer.

My only real complaint is that there are too many characters and I wish some of them had been more fully developed or that they’d simply dropped some and focused more on the ones they kept. Also, I missed the Humans Vs. Mutants theme that runs throughout most of the X-Men movies. But that’s a small nitpick.

I think the lack of character focus prevents the movie from achieving comic book movie greatness, but other than that, if you like these kinds of films, I think you’ll have a good time at the theater.

Oh, and Apocalypse was a pretty darned good villain. Poe Dameron, what happened to you? Amazing that the actor can portray both good guys and bad guys with the same flourish.