X-MEN: APOCALYPSE directed by Bryan Singer, written by Simon Kinberg, with James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence and Oscar Isaac. A 20th Century Fox release. 144 minutes. Some subtitles. Opens Friday (May 27). See Listing. Rating: NNN
If you’re not familiar with the X-Men canon, where do we even start? There are mutants, extraordinary individuals with specific abilities humans fear and hate them, forcing them into hiding.
Except that in 1962 they publicly resolved the Cuban Missile Crisis, and in 1973 one of them tried to drop a baseball stadium on president Nixon, as respectively depicted in X-Men: First Class and X-Men: Days Of Future Past.
X-Men: Apocalypse picks up in 1983, where pacifist telepath Professor Xavier (James McAvoy) and shape-shifting rebel Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) find themselves back on the same side to battle an ancient mutant (Oscar Isaac) who’s recruited their old frenemy Magneto (Michael Fassbender) for his extinction-level scheme. Also involved are the professor’s old flame, CIA agent Moira Mactaggert (Rose Byrne), and the big bad’s other hench-mutants: Angel (Ben Hardy), Psylocke (Olivia Munn) and Storm (Alexandra Shipp).
It gets complicated you may want to consult Wikipedia.
Days Of Future Past was supposed to reset the X-franchise (and erase the lesser efforts like Brett Ratner’s franchise-killing The Last Stand), but director Bryan Singer and his screenwriters are still struggling to refold their origami-like continuity.
Scott “Cyclops” Summers gets another origin story after being introduced in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which took place a decade earlier in the series’ timeline and still seems to be part of the canon. Whatever. Optic blasts are cool, and the movie has fun with the very silly idea that straight-edge Scott (played here by Mud’s Tye Sheridan) was once a bit of a rebel.
Everyone’s having fun. With newbies Isaac, Sheridan, Sophie Turner and Kodi Smit-McPhee joining series veterans McAvoy, Fassbender, Lawrence, Byrne, Nicholas Hoult and Evan Peters, this may be the most gifted cast yet assembled for a superhero movie, and it’s enjoyable to simply watch them play pretend together.
The requirements of the X-Men franchise are becoming a little -obvious, though, and Apocalypse too often feels like a reworking of familiar elements. (“You know the mutant who does that thing you like? He/she is back, and doing it!”)
A mid-film detour burns a good 20 minutes of screen time just to reintroduce a character who has literally no function in this film’s plot. First Class did the same thing in under a minute and got a big laugh out of it. Fan service used to feel less like work, you know?
normw@nowtoronto.com | @normwilner
