It’s hard to know whether to welcome “X-Men: Apocalypse” with melancholic disappointment or testy annoyance. 
 
 Bryan Singer, a more than capable director, once again returns to the Marvel mutant saga he began in 2000. He launched the first two films in the series with a level of craftsmanship and intelligence that turned the comic-book genre into big, serious business. Without those game-changing hits, Christopher Nolan’s dark Batman trilogy and Disney’s witty, irreverent Marvel Cinematic Universe might not have arrived. 
 
 And now there’s this hollow, unfocused mess. Singer’s fourth X-Men film is not just a step down, it’s a fall down the stairs. 
 
 This time the story is action all the way. There are a dozen sequences where the camera tumbles down some rabbit hole of doom, or looks on while immense boulders crush casualties. They feel like visual diagrams of the movie’s collapse. It’s big in scope and scale and tiny in originality. Using the new term “drop” for a movie’s release was invented for tailspin declines like this. 
 
 The X-Men films have bounced across various timelines, springing from the Holocaust to Hiroshima to the 1970s to the recent past as if the superpowered characters were on trampolines. This episode deposits them in the ’80s, but opens with a dismal prologue in Egypt, 3600 B.C. Flattening landmarks is an action film staple, and here the destruction hits a gargantuan pyramid. Inside that structure is En Sabah Nur aka Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac, unrecognizable in steely blue makeup), a ruthless entity absorbing eternal life through ornate enchanted technology. 
 
 His immortality is halted when guards betray the “false god,” crashing the sloping walls atop him like dominoes. Millennia later he returns to the surface like a really cross mummy, raising an army of evil mutant allies and making magic-wavy-hand gestures against humans. 
 
 Michael Fassbender reprises his role as Magneto. 
 
 Apocalypse also seems to be juggling the film’s convoluted plot lines and character back stories, which scarcely fit together. A large cast of 16 comic book characters returns here, eight of them recast since their last appearance, none of them holding center stage. 
 
 James McAvoy’s schoolmaster for young mutants, Professor X, delivers another serving of his signature charm, moving into new, anguished territory only when Apocalypse grows to Paul Bunyan size and pounds him with giant fists. Michael Fassbender reprises his role as the antihero Magneto, levitating himself while pinching his face into a constipated scowl. Jennifer Lawrence as the chameleon Raven/Mystique propels her scenes through sheer force of personality. Her dialogue and character arc are so creatively malnourished that Scarlett Johansson’s walk-by role as Black Widow in “Captain America: Civil War” pushes her aside in its wake. 
 
 Hugh Jackman’s speechless cameo as Wolverine works; 16 years since he created the role, he’s still a remarkable roughneck. But his minor presence here is sheer fan service. 
 
 The bedrock virtues of Singer’s earlier work, from “The Usual Suspects” and “Apt Pupil” through his superhero crowd-pleasers, were his commitment to surprising and challenging audiences. His characters had unexpected dimensions, and his stories had a meaning or two that he would not allow to fall out of focus. 
 
 Never for a moment does this X-Men revisit the issues of tribal prejudice, minority rights and alienation that made his earlier films so compelling. Here we have a team of characters in high-tech battle gear combating a rival squad of bad guys as Dr. Evil aims to wipe out our world for no clearly defined purpose. 
 
 Even die-hard Comic-Con fans can take only so much of this, but the film’s attention to international marketing seems likely to deliver a hit. Olivia Munn’s villainess Psylocke swings a samurai sword that should delight fans in Asia, where 70 percent of film profits are mined today. The film would be a success if the only thing that mattered about producing movies was making a profit. ||||| 2 stars (out of 4) 
 
 Magneto. Mystique. Cyclops. Beast. 
 
 If these names don’t sound familiar — or fill you with instant, unfettered glee — then sit out this perfunctory installment of the X-Men series. Deep investment in the history of Professor X's hair loss and Jean Grey's psychic skills set is a must. 
 
 X-Men: Apocalypse (in theaters Friday, May 27) is the sixth chapter of the Marvel comic book franchise since 2000. (That doesn’t include the two Wolverine stand-alones). The dormant series enjoyed a resurgence thanks to 2011’s 1960s-era X-Men: First Class, which was sleek, clever and birthed two superstars in Jennifer Lawrence and Michael Fassbender. The stakes and the cast increased for 2014’s Days of Future Past, set in the 1970s. 
 
 Now we’re in the 1983. And the “Greed Is Good” decade is, well, not great to our favorite mutants. They’re stuck in a meh plot and subpar special effects. The characters are rescued, of course. But their savior is not a superhero — it’s an awesome synth-pop ‘80s soundtrack. 
 
 Sweet plots are made of this: A decade has passed since Magneto (Fassbender) tried to assassinate the president. He’s Teddy Ruxpin compared to the titular, all-powerful ancient villain (Oscar Isaac, unrecognizable). Newly unearthed and none too pleased about his centuries-long slumber, the monster aims to build a new world order. He's well on his way, thanks to his ability to transfer his sinister consciousness to others. That’s how he recruits his Four Horsemen — Magneto (Fassbender), Psylocke (Olivia Munn), Storm (Alexandra Shipp) and Angel (Ben Hardy). 
 
 Stopping this madman and his disciples isn’t going to be a walk in the laboratory. A flock is required. (Sorry, not a Flock of Seagulls. But you will hear them in the background.) How fortunate that Professor X (James McAvoy) is still running his Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters at his mansion in upstate New York. His prized teen pupils include telepathic Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) and Cyclops, (Tye Sheridan), who can shoot energy beams out of his eyes. Also ready to fight on Team X: his childhood friend Mystique (Lawrence), Beast (Nicholas Hoult), Quicksilver (Evan Peters, a human highlight reel) and former love, CIA star Moira MacTaggert (Rose Byrne). 
 
 This plans only falls into place after 90 minutes of frustratingly splintered storytelling. You’ll need a notebook and an atlas to keep track of the mutants’ whereabouts, as they’re hiding out everywhere from Berlin to the Midwest. (Apocalypse himself is in Cairo). Only Magneto’s backstory — set in Poland — features any semblance of intrigue: Working quietly at a factory under an assumed name, he can still summon his ability to control magnetism. But he doesn’t unleash his powers for evil until death strikes his wife and daughter. Later, he becomes unglued while revisiting his horrific time in a concentration camp at Auschwitz. 
 
 Leave it to the mesmerizing Fassbender to find the gritty pathos within a generic superhero flick. Lawrence, meanwhile, is visibly going through the shape-shifting motions. She may be an Oscar-winning actress, but she can’t mask the look of franchise burn-out. 
 
 When the mutants do finally face off, the payoff underwhelms. Don’t come in expecting the soaring thrills of Captain America: Civil War or fearing the heavy-handed dreariness of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Consider this the not-so-happy medium. Sure, director Bryan Singer delivers a few jolts (Hugh Jackman's Wolverine cameo is a stunner). Yet, for the most part, the battle sequences fail to make an impact. It’s 2016. Why must we be subjected to fiery blue lasers, CGI’ed explosions and The Mummy-like chaos in the Egyptian sands? Swap out the characters, and you’d swear you were watching the climax of Singer’s original X-Men film 16 years ago. 
 
 The dialogue is even clunkier. “You’ve got your warplanes,” intones Lawrence, behaving like Katniss Everdeen minus the arrows. “Let’s go to war!” Even the movie’s snappiest, most self-aware line — “at least we can agree that the third one is the worst”— elicited more groans than laughs in the theater. 
 
 The film ends with the mutants continuing to master their powers. Perhaps for the next go-round they can learn how to add pizzazz to a tired script. 
 
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– Critics predicted 2014's X-Men flick would be a tough act to follow—and they were right. There's plenty of explosions, plus star power from James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, and Jennifer Lawrence, but X-Men: Apocalypse just doesn't measure up. Here's what critics are saying: Director Bryan Singer's "fourth X-Men film is not just a step down, it's a fall down the stairs," writes Colin Covert at the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "Never for a moment does this X-Men revisit the issues of tribal prejudice, minority rights, and alienation that made his earlier films so compelling." "Even die-hard Comic-Con fans can take only so much of" what Covert calls a "hollow, unfocused mess." Jennifer Lawrence "may be an Oscar-winning actress, but she can't mask the look of franchise burn-out," writes Mara Reinstein at Us Weekly. The actors are generally "stuck in a meh plot" with "subpar special effects" and a clunky script. Plus it takes 90 minutes for the mutants to face off, and then "the payoff underwhelms." The one bonus: "an awesome synth-pop ‘80s soundtrack." Joe Morgenstern saw the film in 3D, "which I wouldn't recommend, but then I wouldn't recommend seeing it in any D," he writes at the Wall Street Journal. "Enormous goings on keep going on, and on, in X-Men: Apocalypse, a collection of explosions, eruptions and conflagrations that suggests the implosion of a franchise," he writes. "This is surprising, as well as disappointing." But Rafer Guzman is more forgiving. "X-Men: Apocalypse is definitely one of the series' weakest entries, but it's far from a total disaster," he writes at Newsday. At least the mutants aren't fighting aliens but "an ancient Egyptian god nicknamed Apocalypse who wakes up in the early 1980s and begins amassing followers to help him 'cleanse' the Earth." And "nearly every mutant gets his or her moment."