1) The Tone
X-Men: First Class, you’ll probably agree, is not a perfect film. What it does have in spades, however, is an unapologetic sense of fun that wasn’t often found in X-Men movies previous. Days of Future Past, though much darker, continued the trend by peppering scenes with lighter moments: Wolverine waking up in 1973 and accidentally piercing a water bed with his claws, then later being accused of dropping acid in his time-travel confusion.
X-Men: Apocalypse is, unfortunately, short on such moments, with one of few laughs going to the Quicksilver scene, borrowed from Days of Future Past and which feels tonally off here. The rest of the film is just dour and self-serious; it’s the film that drains the fun from the First Class trilogy, with Singer and Kinberg inexplicably treating this overblown, campy blockbuster affair like it’s actually some Very Serious Oscar bait.