X-Men: Apocalypse

By this time, only die-hard X-Men devotees could be expected to keep things straight in a film franchise that’s been steered in so many different directions, from sequels to prequels to spinoffs to origin stories.

Those legions of fans have perpetuated the popularity of both the movies and the comic books. Yet more casual viewers are left trying to put all the pieces together. The revolving door of characters continues in X-Men: Apocalypse, which finds the team of mutant superheroes collectively trying to save the world against all odds for a sixth time.

For those trying to keep score, the narrative for this installment picks up roughly where the most recent effort, X-Men: Days of Future Past, left off. It’s set, rather arbitrarily, in the mid-1980s, when the mutant world is rocked by the emergence of the indestructible Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac), a reincarnated mutant from more than 5,000 years ago whose disillusionment leads to a plan for world domination via nuclear holocaust.

So Apocalypse regains his array of special powers and assembles a quartet of “horsemen” including Magneto (Michael Fassbender), who carries some cynicism of his own after a family tragedy. Indeed, saving Earth from complete destruction will be a tall task for Professor Xavier (James McAvoy) and his team at the School for Gifted Children, including familiar faces Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), Beast (Nicholas Hoult) and Quicksilver (Evan Peters).

In his fourth X-Men outing, director Bryan Singer stages some impressive action set pieces, and the overly expository screenplay by Simon Kinberg (Days of Future Past) generates some moderate thrills from a familiar narrative formula — even if there’s a completely tone-deaf Auschwitz reference. But there’s hardly anything here that invigorates the franchise.

More than anything, the series shows signs that it’s running out of steam, and that the motives for its continuation at this point are more financial than creative. But you can hardly blame the filmmakers for trying to cash in as long as the current glut of superhero blockbusters allows it.

The strategy here appears to be simple: Just dress up a threadbare story with some dazzling visual effects, throw the word “apocalypse” in the title to raise the stakes, and introduce a new character or two into the comic “universe” to keep the door open for more installments down the line. Hey, X-Men, why?

Rated PG-13, 143 minutes.