X-Men apocalypse review

[Westside Steve]

X-Men apocalyps

 

20th Century Fox

 

PG-13. 147 min

 

 

 

I guess I should apologize in advance for yet another superhero extravaganza. I know, I know, it seems like there's a new one every week and to be honest they do tend to blend together in a multi colored fog. As you know I was a fan of comic books growing up and think fondly of the way things were decades and decades ago.

 

I've also mention that I was personally a fan of DC Comics and I firmly believe, (because it's true) that Stan Lee and the folks at Marvel swiped most of their ideas from the DC gang.

 

Now let me say this to the Marvel fans, these guys have done a great job with some of their borrowed ideas and in many cases, like the Legion of Superheroes and it's imitation the X-Men have surpassed the originals.

 

The legion was an ever-changing group of young people from different planets and with different abilities and with different stories to tell. It was Marvell who really doubled down on the individual personalities and the type of stories that a bunch of young people living together outcast from society and with strange powers might tell.

 

And since you have an endless pallet of characters you can draw from or create out of the air (except for just a few regulars) the possibilities are endless. Here, as in many superhero sagas, it's time for a reboot in a way. One of the main reasons for that is that some of the stars from the last few films are too old or too rich to keep coming back for more.

 

Here in the flashback just about the only one of stature is Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique, bless her heart, who returns for maybe one more whirl. This story affords a little background into the earlier meetings between bad guy Magneto and good guy Xavier.

 

Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart have now been replaced by youngsters Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy.

 

As in the STAR TREK reboot it's not that hard to suspend belief and accept younger actors as the guys we are familiar with.

 

I was a little concerned as X-Men APOCALYPS begins because we are treated to 15 minutes or so of ancient Egypt and a sequence that looks like outtakes from THE MUMMY. That's the idea, sort of, behind this episode, that there is some ancient Egyptian god who wants to, as so many movie bad guys want to do, take over the world. That being said the world conquest is only a framework in which to set other scenes of different characters, different mutants and different lives reacting with each other. Even though many of those sub stories did little to move along the one idea at hand I found them at least interesting. And, unlike the strange creatures in ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS, I found these characters well, charismatic. One particularly interesting stories was how Magneto came to be the villain that he eventually became.

 

Another thing I enjoyed is the fact that it was these little vignettes rather than battle after battle after battle that filled out the bulk of the film. And it is pretty long. Don't get me wrong, if you are a fan of battles the climax was just fine. Just fine meaning at the very least up to the standards of what we've come to expect in modern-day superhero films, that is not terribly imaginative but action packed and satisfying.

 

I'm always glad when these things are more character-based than CGI and action based.

 

 

B

 

WSS