Days of Alternate Past: X-MEN: APOCALYPSE

X-Men: Apocalypse lives up to its name, putting the entire globe in jeopardy, but also proving high stakes spectacles work if you tap into the dread of them. There’s a sequence here where an all-powerful ancient superbeing launches every nuke in the world and it’s shot with such solemn gravity, taking in the faces of regular humans looking up in awe at their imminent possible demise, that it has weight and terror many films of this ilk either skip right past or take for granted. When Bryan Singer’s X-Men was released in 2000 it was considered acceptable stakes for a sci-fi action movie to merely menace a small gathering of dignitaries in New York. But recently, with movies like Batman v. Superman and the Transformers and Avengers regularly tearing up entire cities, there’s been something of a superhero stakes race, threatening ever more danger and destruction for less and less of an effect. When everything’s the end of the world, nothing is.

Now, returning for his fourth time directing this series, Singer knows every other superhero movie somehow takes outsized cataclysms and boils down to the same punching and shooting. Apocalypse understands we really want to see psychic energy swords, teleportation, shape shifting, bolts of lightening, and two telekinetic beings fighting each other on a mental battlefield. It ends with a symphony of superpowers, creatively sent into battle against others in clever combinations. And this CGI slugfest is earned by taking time to introduce its menagerie of mutants, adroitly and organically integrating a dozen or more characters, giving them each great splash page show-off moments as well as an emotional grounding for interwoven arcs. Singer crafts compelling images interested in the visceral horror and whimsical delight of having these powers, never losing sight of either’s impact on the characters in the face of glowing effects-heavy sequences.

This is all part of Singer’s approach to the X-Men, now in its ninth iteration, counting spinoffs. He set a template for the movie world of mutants trying to find acceptance and family. Saving the world is simply an outgrowth of their interpersonal dramas, calamities brought about by their angst. As this movie begins – on a reset timeline after the time-travel loop-de-loop of Days of Future Past – Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) is running his school for mutants, including new students like Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) and Scott Summers, who will become Cyclops (Tye Sheridan).  Teachers include Beast (Nicholas Hoult) and Havoc (Lucas Till). Meanwhile, chameleon Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) is running an underground rescue operation for abused or captured mutants like young teleporter Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee), while Magneto (Michael Fassbender) is in hiding, living a quiet small-town life in Poland. They just want to live comfortably and secretly with their powers, and Singer, with a screenplay by Simon Kinberg, finds time to seriously consider their attempts at understanding their powers.

Alas, peace is not to be, as the aforementioned superbeing who wants to destroy the world awakens with much fanfare. He is Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac under a pile of blue makeup), the world’s first mutant, an ancient Egyptian worshiped as a God for all his wild powers, then buried comatose under a pyramid for thousands of years. When he wakes up to be the villain of this 1983-set alt-history, he wants to destroy the world, but only because he’s lashing out from jealousy and a God complex. While a CIA agent (Rose Byrne) investigating his return warns Professor X about the looming danger, Apocalypse wanders around gathering up rogue mutants for his army, using his power to tempt them to the dark side by amplifying their gifts. He finds: Storm (Alexandra Shipp), an orphan who can control the weather; Angel (Ben Hardy), a cage-fighter with an impressive wingspan; and Psylocke (Olivia Munn), a psychic with energy blades. As he picks them up, he gives them makeovers and snazzy costumes he conjures out of thin air, a neat, convenient trick.

Apocalypse – a fairly one-note villain, but at least he’s new – gains in power, eventually convincing Magneto to join his crusade to remake the world by bringing it to an end, the better to start over with proper mutant worship again. Magneto is torn between a desire to avenge his tragic past – which adds another heart-wrenching trauma early on here – and a need to prove his power and the potential for mutant dominance. He excavates his pain in a sequence at Auschwitz that’s borderline tasteless before gaining eerie pop power as the conflicted villainous man pulls the entire concentration camp apart in a cloud of debris as exorcism. Fassbender does admirable work bringing real sorrow and grief to his portrayal of Magneto, and makes it fit seamlessly into a big Hollywood sci-fi action confection in which a team of superhero teens led by a bald man in a wheelchair must stop an ancient blue God from ending humanity. Singer maintains an engaged and gripping thriller pace slowly drawing many strands together to the inevitable climactic conflagration.

It sounds complicated, bringing so many characters together and sending them into conflict with each other in a tone that’s both gravely serious and goofy fluff. But Singer pulls off this balancing act while confidently shrugging off baggage of prior films and wearing expectations of so much muchness lightly, engaging in straight-faced comic book appeal without pandering to nerds or apologizing to everyone else. He cares about using the characters in interesting and creative ways, whether it’s sending Quicksilver (Evan Peters) through an exploding building, in a fine repeat and escalation of the last film’s show-stopping slow-mo sequence, or setting Cyclops loose at a target, reveling in the surprise force of his uncontrollable laser-vision. Apocalypse puts aside Civil Rights subtext for a gripping globetrotting adventure on its way to an electric light show spectacle shot for wonderment and dopey-cool impact. But because Singer and his team treat the whole project earnestly – cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel shooting brightly and steadily, capturing performances and effects alike in images that takes in the whole movement and expression of the actions – it has a convincing result.

In a time when superhero movies are churned out as mere content, Singer still makes movies. Apocalypse isn’t short on incident or timeline triangulation. But rather than hitting preordained marks and providing coverage with enough space for teasing future features, he shapes a narrative, building characters to care about with problems to invest in, sending them through varied crescendos and climaxes in setpieces rewarding viewers’ interest with real consequences and fine setups and payoffs contained within the borders of its runtime. (There are echoes and cameos to flatter franchise knowledge, but they aren’t integral to their effect, and add to a genuine comic sense of unashamed retconning.) He deploys polished and poised frames that stand back and handsomely photograph superpowers while understanding that having them and using them takes an emotional toll. It’s fun and involving, all of an exciting, entertaining piece. This isn’t like Captain America: Civil War where characters pop up, show off a power, and then disappear with a tease for their own offshoot. It’s one of the best X-Men movies yet, a full and satisfying ensemble spectacle unto itself.

Mad Mutants: X-MEN: FIRST CLASS

With X-Men: First Class the franchise that started in 2000, peaked with 2003’s X2 and then went on to finish off a trilogy and limp through a prequel, has looped around to a second prequel that finally gets down to showing how a group of mutants formed the X-Men in the first place. This is all expositional dialogue from earlier movies tweaked, fleshed out, and made into one mostly coherent feature, but unlike 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, First Class is still capable of surprise. Rather than dutifully double-knotting loose ends that have already been tied, this movie takes a lot of pleasure in its comic-book style mythmaking.

It strikes me that the X-Men series now cumulatively is the best page-to-screen adaptation of the feel of a comic book series with its complicated, overlapping backstories, its ever evolving retconning, and its intricate, sometimes gap-filled, puzzle of exposition spread out across five installments. This new film starts off with several sequences that feel like separate issues of a comic that slowly merge into one storyline. We see a young Erik Lensherr in a World-War-II concentration camp bending a metal gate and then brought before a devious Nazi who, in a jarring edit that crosses the 180 degree line to good effect, is revealed to be a bit of a mad scientist interested in discovering and experimenting with mutated powers. We then see a young Charles Xavier using his telepathy to discover a shape-shifting orphan that has snuck into his cold family’s cavernous mansion, bring some hope to an alienated child.

From there, the movie flits between the two boys who quickly are shown to be young men. It’s the late 50’s. Lensherr (Michael Fassbender) is hunting down hidden Nazis while Xavier (James McAvoy) is working on his thesis at Oxford. They have different approaches towards using their mutations. Lensherr uses his for the power and violent revenge it allows him. Xavier, on the other hand, uses his seamlessly and secretively to give him an (unfair) advantage in social situations. One is all about making himself known; the other prefers to calmly blend in. What’s nice about these early-years portions of the film is the way it reveals their character traits through action. This helps propel the momentum ever forward without (or at least rarely) getting bogged down in the gooey nonsense of characters talking overtly about themselves in unconvincing ways.

Moving forward, into the 60’s, the film is jam-packed with plot and exposition. While good use of the period bric-a-brac allows for fashion, technology and music to flesh out the setting, the film has curiously little use for the civil rights struggle. You would think that would be the clearest allegory for mutants, much like Bryan Singer’s first two films in the series used mutants as a stand in for gay rights. This film has little time for allegory outside of a few dull stabs at social import that are mostly cringe-worthy, like the treatment of the film’s only African American. But in a movie this dense with plot, themes have a tendency to get ignored and when attention is finally, fleetingly, turned upon them, it feels awfully ham-fisted.

Aside from building (and rebuilding) characters and the universe, this is essentially a spy movie. The film busies itself with C.I.A. intrigue involving some well-intentioned agents (Rose Byrne and Oliver Platt) who want to recruit some mutants. To start with, they need a scientist who specializes in researching and theorizing about human mutations. They find one in Charles Xavier. They’re interested in using his knowledge to help in dealing with the devious Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon!) who, reconnaissance tells them, just might have a group of mutant henchmen helping to heat up the Cold War. Why else would he hang around with three surly thugs (January Jones, Alex Gonzalez, and Jason Flemyng) who can provide mysterious, otherworldly enhancements to their intimidations?

This is a large cast, but all of the key elements fall into place in a pleasing manner. Fassbender and McAvoy, fine actors both, never condescend to their roles. With great seriousness, and more than a little bit of obvious pleasure, they command the screen with their fantastic presences. Fassbender, especially, has a kind of epic glower and a muscular suaveness that, in conjunction with his turtlenecks and leather jackets, feels just about as close to a resurrection of 60’s-era Steve McQueen or Sean Connery as we’ll ever get. As for the villain, Kevin Bacon hams it up – he’s clearly having a blast – but he manages to be an awfully serious threat at the same time.

The rest of the cast, while often less noteworthy, tend to be well equipped for what they’re asked to do. The “First Class” itself doesn’t even show up until not too long before the climactic action. But as the team assembles throughout the movie, despite the new characters receiving far less characterization that the main men, it’s fun more often than not to see both young versions of established characters like Mystique (now Jennifer Lawrence) and Beast (now Nicholas Hoult) as well as new-to-the-screen characters like the howling Banshee (Caleb Landry Jones) and the energy-beam-shooting Havoc (Lucas Till). (Shortchanged is Zoe Kravitz as the flying and fireball-spitting Angel who is given the least heroics to do). True to the series pattern of creating eccentric ensembles with powers of varying believability, the group is a fine mix of sci-fi powers that end up working together in fun combinations in the final blast of action.

Despite the heavy amount of plot placed upon the film, it still manages to deliver the summer-movie goods at a rapid-fire pace. Director Matthew Vaughn (who directed last year’s superhero semi-satire Kick-Ass, a movie I enjoyed but slowly slightly soured on) concocts with his five co-writers a pleasing succession of smashing action beats that crash forward with a reassuring regularity. This is a big budget effects-heavy film that features some fine acting and some pleasing action. It’s also the rare franchise film that’s light on its feet despite the weight of accrued details.

It manages a brisk pace and can be quite funny at times, even finding ways to have some small fun with its occasional comic-book corniness (a telepath-blocking helmet is very cool, somewhat menacing, and fairly silly, all in the same instant). The vibrant, saturated colors and a smidgeon of self-conscious winking in the production design (including brief nods to Dr. Strangelove and Basic Instinct of all things) and small cameos do much to further the sense of both continuity and originality. It’s a prequel that’s most satisfying precisely because it finds a good balance between paying homage to all that’s come before and striking out on its own. There are enjoyable nods towards the franchise’s past while laying great groundwork for its potential future.