Welcome to The Morning After, where I share with you what movies I’ve seen over the past week. Below, you will find short reviews of those movies along with a star rating. Full length reviews may come at a later date.

So, here is what I watched this past week:

X-Men: Apocalypse

As Disney/Marvel continues to dominate the box office with its Aveners team-ups, Fox has been successfully leveraging their X-Men franchise to keep a strong competition going. With Deadpool earlier this year, they proved that they have plenty of capacity to grow the series and keep fans enthused. With X-Men: Apocalypse, the younger version of the original cast have settled into their roles in Bryan Singer’s long awaited fourth outing in the universe.

With a title and a villain like Apocalypse, having massive destruction was to be expected and they certainly deliver. Most of the catastrophe is limited to Cairo, Egypt and its ancient region, but the Xavier mansion gets plenty of attention as well. One should expect a visual effects extravaganza and it delivers in spades. Perhaps there are too many effects, but they are done with some level of creativity from the chilling flowing light effects that filled the stone tables on which Apocalypse transfers his essence to the fascinating pyramidal construct that is the final set piece. There are plenty of effects given to each character’s fantastic powers as well, making for a visual feast.

In terms of story, it’s hard to see Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac) as much of a villain considering he has his four horseman do much of the heavy lifting, particularly Magneto (Michael Fassbender), but his machinations are clever and frightening and the powers he does exhibit show tremendous strength and terrifying possibilities. The X-Men franchise has always been about teamwork and while some of the early films didn’t work incredibly well with that concept, this one does so in spades with everyone working together to defeat their enemy. While Captain America: Civil War is about tearing apart a team, X-Men: Apocalypse is about building one and it does so incredibly well.

This isn’t a movie for fans of the Avengers films or enemies of the superhero genre, but for those who have a fondness for the X-Men and want to see thrilling theatrics, this is the film to watch.