THE X-MEN must make life-and-death decisions.
BRYAN SINGER packs “X-Men: Apocalypse” with so many confounding—and sometimes contradictory—elements that it occasionally ends up biting off more than it can chew. That doesn’t make the film any less engaging, though.
For movie buffs, it’s easier to understand the production’s decision to turn the mutant group’s mythology on its head, by upending the story of Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) and taking advantage of JLaw’s box-office clout and cachet. There’s no business like show business, indeed!
In contrast, the experience could be discombobulating for comic book geeks and fanatics who have invested a lot of time (and much of their puberty) to get to know the franchise’s heroes as much as the baddies who drive them nuts! Yes, that’s pretty much the comic-book world for you—most everything is in black and white.
That said, the complex paradigm shift that has heretofore morally impeachable heroes going rogue (Storm) and vice versa (JLaw’s Mystique, Michael Fassbender’s Magneto) provides the tension and impetus for exciting conflicts that allow the film to conveniently segue from its blistering fight and flight scenes, to its moving dramatic moments. —Their shifting allegiances keep viewers guessing!
Fassbender can’t do much to mitigate the movie’s hackneyed sections, especially when he’s tasked to strike a pose with Storm (Alexandra Shipp), Angel (Ben Hardy) and the lovely Psylocke (Olivia Munn), as Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac), at foreground, proselytizes about his stilted vision of an “ideal” world—and unconvincingly justifies his extinction plan!
But, you can trust Fassbender to act circles around the film’s implausibilities and snicker-worthy inanities when he’s given the chance to make sense of how his character has turned to the dark side.
—And, how does Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) figure in the film’s dense dramatis personae?
If you can get past its needless distractions, the film has a good number of compelling, “wow” moments as it reintroduces the X-Men in their “indecisive, irrational” youth—and it doesn’t hurt that the new generation of actors portraying them are easy on the eye.
Uncertainty
It is this element of hit-and-miss, “trial-and-error” uncertainty and the perception of a “new breed” of actors taking over an old franchise that make this “reboot” more viewable, because you see these all-powerful beings scared about the powers they’ve been “gifted”—or “cursed”—with.
It’s exciting to see how Singer works around the initial dynamics that drive the mutants’ relationships with one another—and how crucial their formative and transformative moments are when it’s time for them to make life-and-death decisions.
In this parallel reality, as it is in the world we inhabit, we’re faced with choices that aren’t easy to make.
If you don’t want to linger on the motivations that propel the gifted superhumans’ decisions, there’s a lot of fun to be had in the action-packed thrills the film offers.
When the dust settles, will Apocalypse and his team triumph against Charles Xavier (James McAvoy), Mystique/Raven (Lawrence), Beast (Nicholas Hoult), Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee), Cyclops (Tye Sheridan) and his brother Havoc (Lucas Till), Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) and Quicksilver (Evan Peters)? —Make a wild guess!