Which will be the most successful at the box office?
DOJ, but not by a lot, with CW a close second. While Marvel has built up a lot of goodwill with the Iron Man and Avengers films, the curiosity factor in seeing the big two superheroes go head to head has more pulling power.
Age of Apocalypse might even suffer from superhero fatigue - given that audiences will have seen DOJ and CW already.
Which will critics regard most favorably?
Well, I suspect that CW will have a more nuanced plot (I hope it's more than
just Cap and Tony feuding over Bucky) and the critics seem to really react favourably to Marvel's approach to movie-making. So I'd bet on the critics giving CW a good score - which it probably will deserve, from a writing point of view (if it's the same creative team, although John Favreau hit pure gold with Iron Man, but turned to **** with IM 2, so the same team can't always guarantee a good sequel).
DOJ doesn't look like it's got much of a plot. But then neither did Mad Max, so simple stories done well can be very good. I'd be surprised if DOJ gets better than 80%, given that all the stuff I loved about MOS at least half the critics seemed to hate. It's a much less certain thing. I'd expect it to do better than MOS with the critics, but I doubt it's going to rate anywhere near the Avengers.
XMen Apocalypse..... tough to tell. Critics seem to really like Bryan Singer. He made Superman returns, which was an unbearable piece of ****, but still managed to get a much better ROT score than MOS.
Also, no matter how crappy the story is there's going to be some great action, and also some of the best actors currently working ( I'm thinking Lawrence, Fassbender, Macavoy and Hoult ) so it's going to be watchable.
As for Oscar Isaac, I haven't seen a lot of his stuff, but I don't get the hype
around him. There are plenty of actors who would have brought tons of
gravitas to the role of one of the best X-Villains (possibly the best besides Magneto). So I wouldn't be surprised if critics give it an 85%+ rating.
Which will be your personal favorite?
DOJ - not even close.
If Cap cut off Tony's head with his Shield, I'd get mildly interested in CW. I liked Iron Man (well the first one) and enjoyed TWS, despite having an intense dislike of Captain America ( and that Chris Evans makes him tolerable for me, indicates what a great job he's doing - but that doesn't make the character any more interesting).
I've always found Cap boring, and still do - the whole Government oversight thing, really ? I mean, I find it weird that Tony's on the Government's side in this, if anyone has a problem with authority it's Tony.
Ultimately, the idea of a conflict between Iron Man and Cap doesn't interest me at all. Having said all that, I'm still expecting CW to be an enjoyable movie.
But to me a fight between Batman and Superman is just so much more exciting as a concept than Cap v Tony. And even if I know they end up mates at the end, hell I want to see that play out, even if I can pretty much guess how it will happen.
I mean, Cap v Tony is a reasonably evenly matched fight. Supes v Bats isn't even close, so we all want to see how Bats keeps Supes on the backfoot ( yes, we suspect it will be kryptonite, but that's still something exciting).
Did they give away too much in the trailer, yup. Does it matter, not at all.
As for XMA, well who knows? Just based on the trailer I'd rate it above CW, but really, who knows, it could be terrible. IN terms of source material, it interests me a lot more than CW
I loved bits of DOFP, but as a whole film found it forgettable - I mean, the Sentinels are amongst the most implacable of all the X-villains, and can be pretty damn scary. In the film they more reminded me of the The Fury (from Captain Britain), and for some reason didn't find them scary - possibly because they were so overpowered - it's weird, because the X-heroes not having any chance should have made them terrifying, but instead it kind of made their last stand pointless.....well that was my impression, I mean I just didn't find any of the x-character's deaths particularly emotionally resonant.
But that' just me.
So for me it's likely to be DOJ in front, with CW and XMA fighting for second.