directed by Bryan Singer
written by Simon Kinberg, Singer, Dan Harris and Michael Dougherty
After the mind-bending entertainment provided by mixing two generations of X-Men cast members with X-Men: Days of Future Past, director Bryan Singer and screenwriter Simon Kinberg, with the help of Singer proteges Dan Harris and Michael Dougherty, bring us the first X-Men adventure exclusively featuring the "First Class" ensemble.
The film opens to a scene in Egypt, 3,600 Before the Common Era (the acronym BCE having replaced the religious-themed less-PC "before Christ"), where an ancient ritual is taking place, in which a decrepit but powerful mutant, worshiped as a god by the ancient Egyptians, is about to transfer his consciousness into a much younger mutant (Oscar Isaac). Although this ancient being has many followers, there are those who decry him as a false god, and conspire to collapse the enormous pyramid in which he is conducting the transfer of his consciousness, with him and his acolytes still in it. All are killed except him, but he successfully transfers into the younger man's body.
In the next scene, the year is 1983, and it's been ten years since mutants surfaced in public for the first time, with Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) saving then-American President Richard Nixon from Erik Lensherr, aka Magneto (Michael Fassbender). The former is regarded as a hero by young mutants everywhere, while the latter has gone into hiding in Poland. Meanwhile, CIA agent Moira MacTaggert (Rose Byrne) is looking into the activities of cults that are hell-bent on raising the ancient mutant from his resting place. As it happens, they succeed, with MacTaggert barely escaping alive to report her findings.
A continent away, Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) is running a successful school for mutant children at his Westchester Mansion, with Henry McCoy (Nicholas Hoult) as one of his teachers. High-school student Scott Summers (Tye Sheridan) has just had his mutant powers, or energy blasts from his eyes, manifest, so his older brother, former X-Man Alex (Lucas Till) takes him to Xavier's house, where they meet the professor, and Scott means powerful telepath and telekinetic Jean Grey (Sophie Turner). The emergence of the powerful mutant in Egypt is felt all around the world, and as Professor Xavier uses Cerebro to investigate and finds his way to Moira, who tells him and Havok all about this "Apocalypse."
Meanwhile, the newly-reawakened Apocalypse starts gathering his "horsemen": a street urchin who can control the weather (Alexandra Shipp) better known to us comic-book fans as Storm, a henchwoman for a mutant trafficker with mentally-generated weapons called Psylocke (Olivia Munn), a disgraced, broken former cage fighter in Berlin with angel's wings (Ben Hardy), and Magneto himself, who flies into a murderous rage after tragedy strikes him once more.
Meanwhile, Mystique, having rescued a mutant from the aforementioned Berlin cage fights, a blue teleporter named Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee) learns from the news of the tragedy that has befallen Magneto and also makes her way back to the X-mansion to ask for Charles' help in finding him. Peter (Evan Peters), the superfast mutant from the last movie whose showstopping "Time in a Bottle Sequence" was easily a highlight, also sees the news report and wants to find Magneto, too, because of a very personal reason, and heads over to the mansion as well.
Unfortunately, the Apocalypse and his horsemen head for the mansion as well, and all hell breaks loose.
As Apocalypse puts into motion his plan to lay waste to the world and build a new one on its carcass, the X-Men find that they are the only thing standing in his way.
As as action movie, this film works well enough, and if X-Men and Spider-man movies were the only product on the market, this would hold up pretty decently against the likes of Spider-Man 3, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, X-Men: The Last Stand, either of the two Wolverine spin-off movies, and if I'm honest, even the first X-Men movie which, as instrumental as it was to kicking off the current boom of comic-book-based films, has not aged all that well. It's not in the league of the sublime X2: X-Men United or either of its own immediate predecessors, First Class and the aforementioned Days of Future Past, but it's a decent enough product.
The problem is that this film exists in a world onto which the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been unleashed. While the MCU doesn't quite have a perfect batting average, when their movies are good, they are very good, and whatever their critics may say, most of the key MCU films have been excellent. This problem is compounded by the fact that this film comes almost immediately in the wake of one of the MCU's strongest films thus far, the outstanding Captain America: Civil War, which has, along with its predecessor Captain America: The Winter Soldier and several other MCU films, quite simply raised the standard for this kind of movie by showing that a film can be both solid entertainment and intelligent at the same time. The two previous chapters also achieved this to an extent by telling their stories in the context of the turbulent politics of the 1960s and the 1970s, embedding the narrative firmly in the reality of the time.
With this film, however, Singer eschews the chance to take a shot at Reagan's politics (and the 40th American President doesn't even make an appearance here, unlike Richard Nixon in the last film), and instead elects to tell a straight-up action film about good guys fighting the world-destroying bad guy, with minimal (if any) subtext about prejudice or hatred. Heck, if anything the movie seems to suggest that all of the irrational fear and hatred felt by human towards mutants is justified, as Apocalypse, aided by his horsemen, virtually lives up to his name (as bestowed upon him by Xavier and MacTaggert) and lays waste to major population centers. Apocalypse doesn't ever experience humanity's hate of mutants; he basically sees that his people aren't ruling the earth and decides to change that.
Another problem I have with this film is that, as the first film showing the "repaired" timeline of the X-men (otherwise known as the one in which X-Men: The Last Stand no longer exists) the movie is basically a hot mess. Singer's insistence on trotting out characters that have already appeared in past installments like Jubilee and Psylocke only highlights how screwed up the whole thing is. Singer clearly attempts to dodge the fact that the Angel character already appeared in the aforementioned deleted X-Men movie by never mentioning his alter ego, effectively creating two mutants in his world with wings and blond hair, based on the same character from the comic books. Also, given that Cyclops was a teen in 1983, he would have been significantly older than the James Marsden he supposedly grew into by 2000's X-Men. Also, Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr haven't aged a day despite the fact that it's been twenty years since they first met in X-Men: First Class, and they're basically supposed to start looking like Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen by now. I know I should be appreciating these films on their own individual merits, but considering the conscious effort to belatedly tie everything together I really cannot get out of my head how much of a clusterf**k this particular universe has become, and this movie adds to that.
Anyway, rant aside I took away quite a few positives. Singer seems determined to tell the Dark Phoenix Saga, something he missed the chance to do when he left the X-men for Superman. This, I think, is the main reason he wiped the slate clean, and I honestly hope he gets his shot this time. This movie basically feels like it was meant to pass the time between his palate-cleansing Days of Future Past and his dream X-men story (though of course, in the comics, the chronology is completely different). Also, this was the first X-Men movie that was not at all centered on Wolverine, which was a welcome relief. I would have wanted Cyclops to get a little more screentime, but the fact that he actually gets a character arc in this film is already a huge step forward from the short shrift James Marsden used to get in the original trilogy. I also liked the all-too-brief look into Storm's origins as a thief in Cairo, which is quite faithful to Claremont's comics. Finally, while Quicksilver's--err--Peter's "super speed scene" in this movie was enjoyable and set to a song I actually knew (Sweet Dreams by the Eurythmics), it still pales in comparison to his "Time in a Bottle" scene back in DOFP.
This was a decent movie, but if Fox are going to keep up with Marvel and their cinematic universe, I think they'll have to do a whole lot better than this. This franchise is starting to show some serious signs of wear and tear.
6.5/10
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