Oscar Isaac plays the Apocalypse of the title – the earliest mutant who ruled as a god in the ancient world. Stirring from his slumber, Apocalypse draws together a band of minions, among them Angel (Ben Hardy), Psylocke (Olivia Munn) and Storm (Alexandra Shipp), before turning his attention to the most wanted mutant of them all – the now reclusive Magneto (Michael Fassbender). On the other side of the good-evil divide, wheelchair-bound Professor Xavier (James McAvoy) is still the benign mentor at his School for Gifted Youngsters, where another class of fresh recruits – including the psychic, telekinetic Jean Grey (Sophie Turner), wide-eyed teleporting gargoyle Nightcrawler (an unrecognisable Kodi Smit-McPhee) and laser-eyed rebel Cyclops (Tye Sheridan) – slowly learn how to control their powers. When Xavier realises the extent of Apocalypse’s abilities, he draws together his team of mutants, which also includes veteran heroes Raven/Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) and Beast (Nicholas Hoult) to help cancel armageddon. This, at least, is the plot in the broadest of strokes. As in X-Men: Days Of Future Past, Bryan Singer loads his basket with so many heroes, villains and plot-strands that the film itself seems to be straining to keep up with them all. How do you introduce all these characters, reiterate their back stories for new viewers, track their arcs and keep the story moving forward smoothly all at the same time? It’s a tricky feat to pull off, and X-Men: Apocalypse struggles with the process more than X-Men: Days Of Future Past did. Singer also struggles to balance the light and shade, the playful and dramatic in a way that recalls his effects-overloaded 2013 fantasy Jack The Giant Slayer. An intense plot development is undercut by a downright goofy action sequence; emotional moments are interrupted by the arrival of the purple-faced Apocalypse and a few members of his ‘Four Horsemen’, who look increasingly like a New Romantics band as the film goes on. There are occasional moments where X-Men: Apocalypse really shines, though. A scene with Magneto in a woodland clearing is effective both emotionally and in terms of visceral impact, and it’s superbly framed by Singer’s regular photographer Newton Thomas Sigel. A few opening sequences in the ancient past have a real old-Hollywood sense of pomp and grandeur. Yet Apocalypse’s initial bursts of imagination soon dwindle; once again, we’re faced with a two-dimensional villain intent on laying waste to entire cities. It doesn’t help that an actor as talented as Oscar Isaac is required to project his natural charisma through a mountain of face-paint and latex. X-Men: Apocalypse is by no means a terrible film – the quality of the cast, from Fassbender to McAvoy to Lawrence to Kodi Smit-McPhee to Evan Peters (again great as Quicksilver) ensures there’s always someone worth watching in the quieter moments. But compared to this year’s last big superhero movie, Captain America: Civil War, Apocalypse feels less assured, less fleet-footed at moving between the earnest, the dramatic and the outright camp. When a superhero gets all these elements right, the result can seem effortless; when the balance is wrong, the difference is plain to see. Even the period setting, something the last two films gleefully played around with, seems a little rote and thinly sketched here – there’s a Ms Pac-Man cabinet here, a retro jacket there, but little of the sense of affection or context we saw in Days Of Future Past or X-Men First Class in particular. In its attempt to exceed the scale and stakes of its predecessor, X-Men: Apocalypse stretches itself to breaking point. X-Men: Apocalypse is out in UK cinemas on the 19th May.