Nerds That Geek Movie Review - 'X-Men: Apocalypse'

Written by Mike Cervantes

“This review contains spoilers” is a line that I usually try to avoid when writing movie reviews. However, I absolutely, sincerely, and totally suggest that if you’re interested in watching this movie, that you go and see it before reading anything. 

Do you know how I remind people that they’re old? I tell them that the very first X-Men film came out in the year 2000. Yep, sixteen whole years ago, in a time before we had cinematic universes, banked on their being at least three superhero films per-summer, and before there was even a Sam Raimi-directed Spider-Man. A plucky little movie that could, albeit one based on a comic book franchise loved by an entire generation, paved the way for our modern-day movie landscape.

So here we have a sequel to that movie, made by Bryan Singer, the same director as that original movie, released during a summer blockbuster season that contains a pedigree of its format (Captain America: Civil War), and a lackluster attempt at achieving its formula (Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice) and you’re left with a film that seems destined to occupy the middle ground. One that you just know people are going to say, “Well it’s good, but not as good as Civil War, and it’s not really that hard to be better than Batman vs. Superman.”

But X-Men Apocalypse deserves more than that simple write-off, and all it takes is a trip to the theater to realize that. Once the credits rolled at my Friday, pre-noon, matinee showing of the movie, the reasonably full theater crowd actually applauded, hand to God, honest truth. That proves, at least, that this is an extremely entertaining movie, but it begs to ask: what had happened during that single non-descript, showing to elicit such an enthusiastic response?

Before I get to that, though, there are a few elephants in the room to address. A great deal of the standing opinion of this film was created by a large amount of absolutely scathing reviews that came out weeks before the release, and I’m forced to admit that there are a few points in those reviews that are totally accurate: Yes, the first act bamfs wildly from set piece to set piece like Nightcrawler on blood pressure pills. Yes, the prosthetics for Oscar Issac as Apocalypse, and a few other characters are incredibly cheesy looking. Yes, the CG in the movie manages to look even phonier than the prosthetics. Absolutely, there are characters wasted to the point of them merely being scenery, the worst of which being Olivia Munn’s Psylocke. Her first-act screen time basically amounts to her standing wide-legged on top of boulders as though she’s posing for an extremely expensive cosplay shoot.

There’s a pretty glaringly different second act that seems almost cut completely cut out from another film. Just after Apocalypse’s actions end up destroying the entire X-Mansion, we get what seems to be only about 40 minutes of Josh Helmen’s William Stryker kidnapping four of the main cast, leading to a rescue mission helmed by Cyclops (Tye Sheridan), Jean Grey (Sophie Turner), and Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee). The pay-off of the entire scene is essentially a cameo that can be described as “open box, release Hugh Jackman.”

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If the movie is judged on these merits alone, then it absolutely deserves to be as critically panned as it was before release, but she simple fact of it is that the entirety of this film is so keenly choreographed, and the scenes surrounding the less-than-favorable decisions have so much great connective tissue that I’m simply…impressed by how well they actually managed to put it all together. We long time viewers know that X-Men is NOT an easy franchise to work with: there are always at least two-dozen characters each of whom have their backstory, motivation, and emotional gravity on screen at any time. Singer has done a pretty good job keeping the connected threads intact, and we know that when other directors handle it, like Brett Ratner did in X-3, that the whole thing could easily fall apart and leave us with 2 ½ hours of completely unwatchable dreck.  

When you go back and look at those initial criticisms, and see how the film ultimately dealt with them, you begin to appreciate the total package that this movie represents. We naturally begin with a pre-credits sequence that explains both Apocalypse, and shows the ceremony he undergoes to steal powers from other mutants, an important plot point. We go from there to Germany, where Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) rescues a kidnapped Nightcrawler from a cage match with Angel (Ben Hardy), but not before he accidentally damages Angel’s left wing, beginning a contrasting rivalry between the angelic-looking but brutish Angel, against the demon-faced but benevolent Nightcrawler. Cut to Poland where Magneto (Michael Fassbender) has been in hiding, attempting to raise a family, he has a moment with his daughter that in one swoop reminds the audience that he lost his own parents in Auschwitz, and where he makes a promise never to leave his daughter. Final cut, to New York City, where a young Scott Summers has his powers manifest just in time to toast a school bully and be taken to Xavier’s School for the first time.

Then we get a literal world-shaking event: Rose Byrne’s Moira MacTaggart investigates the ruins of Apocalypse’s temple in time for the locals to complete a ritual, awakening Apocalypse and causing an earthquake. The earthquake is a Deus ex Machina, resonating through Poland, and setting off a chain of events that gets Magneto exposed as a mutant, having his family killed before his eyes, and returning him to his vengeful ways. Jean Grey then senses the earthquake and has a psychic premonition that shakes the X-Mansion, bringing the whole event to Professor Xavier’s (James McAvoy) attention. Thing is, we’re only being told by the movie that this is all an earthquake, it’s really Apocalypse awakening, and just by getting out of bed, he’s already setting into play the events that will lead to his decimation and dominance of the world.

While you are in the midst of watching the film, there’s an appeal to continue to snicker at the giant blue Oscar Issac the film is posing as its main villain, but the plot itself will constantly remind you that Apocalypse is no joke. He gets taken in as a drifter by Alexandra Shipp’s Storm. She has a poster of Mystique on the wall of the slum she lives in, as a token to remind her to be a powerful ‘out’ mutant. Apocalypse then turns her into the first Horseman. He wastes no time doing the same for Psylocke and Angel, but he takes his time with Magneto, teleporting him once again to Auschwitz and training him to use his powers to magnetically manipulate the entire Earth in a way that will surely trigger, well, an apocalypse.

I could go on and on about how the movie grounds its plot, but I’d need to summarize the whole thing from front-to-back and I’m sure you may be interested in seeing this by now. Long story short, the film’s ability to connect and unite all these supposedly disassociated events is what ultimately redeems it as a film overall. At no point does it ever stop motivating its plot based on character. The only reason Mystique is involved is because she hopes to rescue Magneto from Apocalypse’s influence, a motivation she shares with Quicksilver (Evan Peters), who in turn becomes the one to rescue all the children of the exploding X-Mansion with his incredible speed. Even the aforementioned, supposedly filler, scene with Stryker isn’t completely wasted, because it allows the previously established inner circle of Beast, Mystique, and Moira to accept Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Nightcrawler as the “new” team of X-Men. 
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Like I said, I can go on and on, but I consider this to be the best moment to leave the film for its viewers to discover. Don’t let the initial criticism squash your enthusiasm for seeing an X-Film that is at least as enjoyable as the series has been in the past few years, by a director who has spent more than a decade making this series his very own. You’ll be immersed. You’ll enjoy it, and if you were like the audience that I saw it with, you might even applaud. 

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