Mr. Movie: X out this version of ‘X-Men’

X-Men: Apocalypse has James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence and other actors from the 2011 series reboot reprising their roles. Professor Xavier and his sometimes friend and often enemy Magneto and the rest of the trained mutants take on a new enemy. He’s En Sabah Nur, a mutant who convinced the ancient Egyptians that he was a god.

A few of his followers figured out he was a bad dude and they did him in. Centuries later, he’s freed from his pyramid prison and decides to conquer the world. At this point, the movie calls him Apocalypse. Maybe the other mutants and humans call him that. Frankly, by that point, I was already bored, and I’m not completely sure. That is — however — what the credits call him.

Among the mutants he recruits for his effort is an unhappy Magneto. Much chaos follows and with that, X-Men: Apocalypse pretty much looks like the other eight films. And director Bryan Singer, who did the original two X-Men films in 2000 and 2003 and X-Men: Days of future Past in 2014, directs this one in the same tired way.

I don’t use the term tired lightly. The whole superhero thing — as I’ve noted in my recent reviews of the Marvel and DC Comics films — is so worn and tired. Am I alone in thinking this? The villains change. The settings change. And that’s about it. One film is interchangeable with the next. Sometimes a city is devastated. Sometimes it’s a country. Sometimes it’s a whole planet. And it’s always in the last 20 minutes.

Here’s where these films miss big time. They’re loaded with great effects, but outside of parts of the new Captain America and Ant-Man, they’re not much fun. That leads to why do both of those films work and why did the first Iron Man work? They are funny!

This one is not only not funny, it’s also not very interesting.

This story was originally published May 26, 2016 at 1:00 PM with the headline "Mr. Movie: X out this version of ‘X-Men’."