Republished from the show notes of my other site, Fuds on Film.
If we had to explain what’s happened to the X-Men universe’s timelines over the past few films we’d be here all day, so let’s politely skip over the timeline resetting implications of Days of Future Past and just call this a sequel to First Class, which isn’t far away from accurate.
Besides, we’re headed back in time again to kick this off as Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac), the nasty git, is ruling over ancient Egypt in his role as “most powerful mutant”, but rebels seize an opportunity to off him during a ritual that, we later find out, lets him claim the powers and vitality of other mutants, which is how he became so powerful. Taking advantage of this moment of vulnerability they attack, but are partially thwarted by his minions, with Apocalypse left in suspended animation rather than cessated.
It remains that way until he’s dug up by cultists in the heady future of the 1980’s, whereupon he goes about assembling a new squad of elite goons, gaining their trust with promises of ruling a new world and also by enhancing their powers. His new wingmen are a young thief who can control the weather best known as Storm (Alexandra Shipp), an arse-kicking, psyblade wielding Psylock (Olivia Munn), a literal wingman in the shape of winged brawler Angel (Ben Hardy), and finally our favourite metal bending madman, Uri Geller. Wait, no. Magneto (Michael Fassbender).
Magneto had apparently settled down and become a family man after being thwarted in First Class, but after saving a fellow worker in a foundry from a squashy iron-based demise his cover is blown, attracting the attention of the fuzz. When sent to arrest him they accidentally kill his wife and daughter, giving him just the right blend of rage and nihilism to jump on board Apocalypse’s masterplan of “kill everyone”. It’s never particularly well explained, but it seems to be of the general survival of the fittest, destroy all this decadent comfort to forge us into better, stronger, faster people. Oh Apocalypse, you daft punk.
Just the sort of thing you’d need the X-Men to counter, except unfortunately they don’t really exist. With peace having more or less broken out in the last decade or so, the spandex has been retired around Xavier (James McAvoy)’s school in favour of actual teaching for once. Hank McCoy (Nicholas Hoult), or Beast to his mates, is still around to mentor the new generation of young ‘uns, including powerful telepath Sansa Stark, sorry, Jean Gray (Sophie Turner), and the boy with kaleidoscope laser eyes, Scott ‘Cyclops’ Summers (Tye Sheridan).
They get the band back together when shape shifting Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) shows up, with Kurt ‘Nightcrawler’ Wagner (Kodi Smit-McPhee) in tow, having saved him from a beating at the hands/wings of Angel. She warns them of the coming threat and, after a bit of arm twisting, convinces Xavier to get back on a war footing and train up the youngsters to fight alongside them, and the returning sports racer Quicksilver (Evan Peters), who wants to talk some sense into his unknowing father, Magneto.
And so it goes, with yet more landmark buildings getting destroyed via CG and with the punching and the kicking, oi vey. The CG battles look fine, but the main interest really only comes in seeing the new mutants show off their powers. Dramatically the fights are a little flat, and as with all of these blockbusters the final act suffers accordingly.
X-Men: Apocalypse gets an easier time from me than Civil War because a lot of the earlier CG showcases are rather more imaginative than the Marvel outing, particularly a Quicksilver scene that, admittedly, is similar to previous examples, bit no less enjoyable for it.
Likewise, for all of my bitching about the Civil War‘s cacophony of characters, which is just as prevalent here, they’re all given moments in direct service of the main conflict, as opposed to Civil War which is using them as sequel hooks. Also, by this point in the franchise you can count McAvoy and Fassbender being familiar enough with the characters to provide the moral conflict effectively and efficiently.
Sadly the actual physical conflict is rather less interesting, not just in terms of the CG finale, but Apocalypse as a character isn’t all that interesting, and poor Oscar Issac’s not given much to do other than issue an entirely generic series of standard issue megalomaniacal rants.
Even if it ends with a bit of a whimper, the preceding two hours are entertaining enough, although again this could do with loosing at least half an hour of that. Of course, part of the entertainment comes from the prequel trilogies different time frames, so it’s a veritable cavalcade of 80’s references to enjoy or be irritated by, depending on your outlook.
The X-Men universe has always done a better job of mixing the drama with enough levity to keep things fun, and it’s really here that DC should be looking for inspiration rather than the Marvel Studios output. What it shouldn’t be doing is sniffing their own farts to the degree that Bryan Singer has of late, calling the X-Men series “grounded and serious”, which shows a worrying detachment from reality.
All of these films, DC, X-Men, Marvel, are stupid escapism and CG showreels of varying quality. They’re live action cartoons, and should be viewed as such, bearing in mind that you’re not going to get any real emotional or dramatic depth. That’s why the best of these are the ones that don’t forget it, and why neither of the two we’ve spoken about recently are better than Deadpool. Still, X-Men: Apocalypse takes second place in the rankings this year, so far at least, and if you still have the appetite for comic book adaptations it’s a solid choice.