X-MEN:APOCALYPSE – mutants showdown!

It’s here! The long-waited final part of the X-Men trilogy made up by X-Men: First Class and X-Men: Days Of Future Past is out in the cinemas all around the world. What will the fans think about this last Marvel blockbuster?

 

The movie is directed by Bryan Singer and welcomes back on the screen not only the most famous of our beloved mutants like Professor X (James McAvoy), Magneto (Michael Fassbenger), Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) and Beast (Nicholas Hoult), but also “new” characters like the incredibly powerful Psylocke (Olivia Munn) and Archangel (Ben Hardy). Mostly we see new versions of a lot of gifted youngsters we already know and love: young Jean Grey (Sophie Turner), Scott Summers (Tye Sheridan), Storm (Alexandra Shipp), Nightcrawler (Kodi Smith-McPhee and many more!

 

First things first… When are we?

 

The X-Men are a Marvel creation and they comprehend an incredible amount of different characters. It’s hardly surprising that even the amount of movies about them is pretty impressive – we have now a total of nine, if we count the recent Deadpool (2016). As it often happens with such huge series of films, the timeline has gotten slightly… confusing. Not only the movies are divided in three sets of trilogies that have some incongruences between them, but all those who have seen the previous movies know that time travel is involved.

So when is the story of Apocalypse set? We can pretty much say by now that everything that has happened in the original trilogy (X-Men, X-Men 2 and X-Men: The Last Stand) has… not actually happened any longer. While X-Men Origins: Wolverine could still be valid, we have some doubts with The Wolverine, but what’s for sure is that Apocalypse follows up on the actions of X-Men: Days of Future Past, which is the sequel of X-Men: First Class. Since Days of Future Past is the movie with time travel, we start from the future, get back to the past to change events, and then at the end of the movie get a glimpse of a new future. Now with Apocalypse we explore the part of the past from where the events have been changed forever and discover what our dear characters are making with their second chance. So in the end… the ’80s are back!

 

When someone calls himself Apocalypse you know things are about to get messy…

 

The story of the movie starts with the discovery of a God-like mutant who seems to be the first mutant in the history of the world – and of course he wants this fact to be well known to everyone, because after taking a forced nap lasted a couple millennia, the guy has really strong ideas about how the world should work and he has the means to make it work his way. While the first part of the plot is a bit slow and full drama (the amount of money the world will have to pay to rebuild everything after Apocalypse’s stunt is unprecedented, but I’m going to say that that same amount of money spent in therapy for Magneto would not fix all the guy’s problems at this point), the second half of the story if full of action. Our “good” mutants have to try to save the world… With some unexpected allies and a lot of twists!

We get to see new sides of people we thought we knew – considering the really high number of important characters, the roles are really well managed. Everyone’s presence turns out to be pretty important and the mutants’ special abilities are incredibly well played. We can’t complain about the special effects either – the fights are not boring in the slightest.

The movie can be said to not have been disappointing – although I must admit to have been expecting something a bit different. Considering the way Singer had directed Days of Future Past, I assumed this movie would also be of a similar kind – action based – but I have to say it was slightly surprising. There sure were a lot of common aspects, but emotions and love stories played a bigger role than expected. Hard to say if this was a good or bad thing!

 

Stellar Cast

 

It’s really hard to find someone to complain about in the cast – not only because most of the actors have already acted as their characters a few times, but because their chemistry is so obviously solid they’re always a joy to see. We have been shown in interviews and bloopers that all the main cast is at this point very friendly and close – and that sure comes through the screen! The younger and brand new part of the cast seems to have adapted pretty well too – now I can’t wait to see those behind the scenes, considering the X-Men cast is famous to play pranks on each other normally… add a bunch of kids to the mix… what could they possibly have been up to?

A special shout out goes to Michael Fassbender’s emotional scenes and Jennifer Lawrence’ acting – her character has a huge part in the movie and she portrays her fierceness and insecurities perfectly.

 

4.5/5 Recommended