X-Men: Apocalypse

The defining constraint on Bryan Singer’s 2016 film is a costume. Oscar Isaac called the Apocalypse outfit excruciating: a suit of roughly forty pounds, a cooling system running constantly, a purpose-built saddle, and no ability to turn his head. Technicians scraped it off him for hours. The consequence is visible on screen, because the villain does not fight. He stands, raises a hand and talks. That constraint hands the film’s liveliest sequence to a character who is not fighting anyone. Quicksilver carrying everybody out of the exploding mansion was built by the Australian house Rising Sun Pictures, the same studio behind the equivalent scene in Days of Future Past, and it arrives around the midpoint. After it the scale grows but the invention does not: the climax is an entirely digital rubble storm over Cairo. The marketing became its own story. After a billboard showed Apocalypse with a hand around Mystique’s throat, Rose McGowan attacked the studio on 3 June 2016, and Fox apologised and said it had pulled the materials. Not for you if: you want practical effects or a duel built between two characters. The last stretch of the 144 minutes is pure digital demolition, with all four Horsemen on screen at once and little way to track who is doing what.