X-Men: Apocalypse : Packed with mutant wonders

Cast: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Oscar Isaac, Nicholas Hoult

Rated: 6/10

For all those mutant humdingers, X-Men are here and so is apocalypse in more ways than one. For your delight, there is an array of oldest, old and new mutants spanning a situation that began all those eons ago in 3,600 BC Egypt and coming down on a 1980s unsuspecting world.

At the centre of all this action packed sequencing is Apocalypse, the overtly CGI-ed and Prosthetic-ised Oscar Isaac as the world’s first ever mutant who has a philosophy as old as time itself, a time when his body hopping session goes awry and he gets trapped in the core of an Egyptian pyramid while in the middle of the process of transferring his consciousness into a another younger, more able human body.

By the time he is awakened by a group of believers it is 1983 and the world is all about things he has never seen or imagined. There are nukes, there is a cold war, there are superpowers and rockstars and there is a new crop of mutants going about their jobs as a matter of routine.

Mr First Mutant is angry, wants to end the rule of “false Gods” and wants the Earth clear of all the nuclear heads, strangely for all. He recruits (read overpowers four disgruntled mutants with a lot of brain trickery and even manages to connect and take over the psychic powers of Professor X who has the ability to connect to every brain on Earth! Only now, he is in a wheel chair and guiding a crop of new generation mutants at his beautifully wooded and very English sprawling facility.

Amid all this, there is a lot of action, packed stories, parallel issues and ways and means that make this one an interesting caper to be with.

The crop of mutants that director Bryan Singer gathers this time round in his fourth film on the subject is loaded. The young ones are fast, furious and yet fun. The older ones like Raven/Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) are all hung up on past issues. Professor X wheels in here too, this time with his cybernetics even as the somewhat grey-shaded Magneto (Michael Fassbender) comes in with all the destruction borne out of losing his wife and daughter after being discovered in remote Poland.

There’s Auswich and the Jew pogrom too to make things heavy not to mention a reprogrammed armed weapon that Wolverine (Huge Jackman) has become at an American military facility. He comes, kills and vanishes into an icy forest in a jiffy.

The magnetic upheaval that a misguided Magneto creates, the flying nukes (into space), the destruction in Egypt and all those dangling bridges and destroyed high-rises are arrestingly conjured up and make the film a visual delight. However, the introspections, the carry-on-series-and-times-and-stories make it not so much for children as for young adult followers of Marvel heroes. They are all there in this one, mostly, except for young screen entrant Deadpool.

But that’s okay I guess as this one is about serious end of civilisation issues and is more occupied with the mumbo jumbo of old man Al Sad Nur.

Interesting, happening and full of action this one. And, by the way, the fun is with all those youngsters like Quicksilver, like Jean, like all the to-be X-Men. 

Source: Sunday Pioneer, 22 May, 2016