4) The Villain Is Botched
En Sabah Nur, aka Apocalypse, is one of the most formidable foes to be found in the X-Men comics, with one of the more intriguing backstories. Unfortunately, there’s not much sense of that in Apocalypse. Rather than delve into dense X-Men comic history to truly get a sense of who Apocalypse is, Kinberg and Singer have just given us a generic, cut-out super-powered bad guy.
Where First Class and Days of Future Past had Kevin Bacon and Peter Dinklage as outwardly respectable but secretly ruthless zealots, Apocalypse is never so clearly defined. There’s never enough time given to delineate his plan, and we never get a sense of who he is or, for that matter, what his powers are. Oscar Isaac does his best to bring En Sabah Nur to life, but the material he’s working with is confused from the start.