Review: X-Men: Apocalypse

X-Men: Apocalypse (12A)

USA 2016 144 mins Dir: Bryan Singer Cast: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Oscar Isaac, Sophie Turner, Tye Sheridan

Few blockbuster franchises have had a choppier history than the X-Men movies, a series that has rewritten its own template more often than telepathic mutant Charles Xavier has read minds. From Bryan Singer’s first two genre-defining offerings to Brett Ratner’s (somewhat unfairly) maligned The Last Stand to the sub-standard Origins: Wolverine and two excellent reboots (First Class; Days of Future Past), the quality has been as chequered as the characters have been varied. However until now, one relatively consistent element has been the quality of Singer’s output: having inaugurated the franchise and delivered arguably its greatest entry in the form of 2003’s X2, he’s the mutant auteur and the keeper of the X-Men flame.

It’s therefore a pity to announce that the latest, X-Men: Apocalypse, is almost certainly the weakest of Singer’s output; hardly the worst superhero movie ever made, but the sense of disappointment is heightened when one considers the usually extraordinary control employed by the director. Summing up the plot – and the subsequent baggage that comes with it – is something of a headache, suffice it to say that the storyline picks up 10 years after the time-wiping Days of Future Past in 1983, inaugurating an introduction to a new generation of young X-Men who, rather weirdly, are designed to make the still-youthful ensemble of James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence and Nicholas Hoult look like battle-scarred veterans.

As for the plot (and that word really ought to come in capitals with an underline, given its overstuffed nature), we get a new baddie in the form of dreaded ancient Egyptian deity En Sabah Nur/Apocalypse (Oscar Isaac, valiantly attempting to emote from beneath ludicrous make-up), the world’s first mutant who awakens after thousands of years to try and establish a new world order with his four horsemen (an occurrence that has stretched back across the millennia and which, as Rose Byrne’s returning CIA agent Moira MacTaggert points out, acted as the basis for the Bible itself).

Meanwhile Xavier (McAvoy) is still running his Gifted School for Youngsters where a young Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) is in the throes of grappling with her powerful telepathic abilities (shades of the Dark Phoenix storyline so badly mangled in The Last Stand) and a new student has arrived in the form of laser-eyed Cyclops (a charismatic Tye Sheridan). Raven (Lawrence) is currently in Berlin following her foiling of a Presidential assassination at the end of Days of Future Past; there, she rescues teleporting Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee) from a cage fight with winged Angel (Ben Hardy). Magneto (Fassbender) has gone to ground in Poland, working in a foundry and living with a wife and child – until, in the film’s most gripping sequence, tragic circumstances compel him to become one of Apocalypse’s aforementioned Horsemen along with Angel, a newly youthful Storm (Alexandra Shipp) and Psylocke (Olivia Munn).

Got all that? It’s the sort of dense tapestry that makes Captain America: Civil War look like a stripped-down Shane Meadows drama and unfortunately the sheer weight of it all appears to get the better of Singer at times. What’s most bizarre is the sense, ironically, that this is a franchise terrified of catching up to its own future, a meandering mid-section taking us back to one of the key locations of X2 in a seeming attempt to (yet again) reset the clock on one of the franchise’s signature characters. As a movie, Apocalypse is so intent on looking backwards that we never get a sense it’s moving forwards, a development not helped by the bland writing of Angel, Psylocke, Storm and a smattering of the other youthful X-Men; it distinctly lacks the freshness and zip of Matthew Vaughn’s unexpectedly terrific First Class, which rejuvenated the characters by taking them back to their origins.

More unexpected are the occasionally clanging tonal shifts, quite out of the ordinary for Singer. A tasteless bit of money shot destruction revolving around Magneto’s tragic Auschwitz history feels crassly exploitative, whilst a would-be showstopping sequence involving Evan Peters’ scene-stealing Quicksilver is otherwise undermined by its confused mixture of drama and comedy. When everything eventually bogs down in the kind of mindless world destruction that makes Batman v Superman look restrained (and rest assured that despite everything, this is a superior movie), it’s tempting to stop caring.

The reason why we don’t is the gripping gravitas provided by McAvoy and, especially, Fassbender, two consummate performers who make us look beyond all the head-buckets, hot-pants and spandex to communicate the essential tortured humanity of their defiantly non-human characters. Despite the movie’s rampant explosivity it’s the quiet moments involving these two figureheads that resonate most strongly, particularly when they share the screen, reminding us of the potent intelligence Singer brought to his previous franchise highs. Were this powerhouse duo to remain at the helm, there’s plenty of reason to hope for a bright future in the X-Men series.