Monday, June 13, 2016

X-men: Apocalypse

DIRECTOR: Bryan Singer LEAD CAST:  James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Oscar Isaac, Nicholas Hoult, Rose Byrne, Tye Sheridan, Sophie Turner, Olivia Munn, Lucas Till  SCREENWRITER:  Simon Kinberg  PRODUCER:  Lauren Shuler Donner, Simon Kinberg, Bryan Singer, Hutch Parker  EDITOR:  John Ottman, Michael Louis Hill  MUSICAL DIRECTOR:  John Ottman  GENRE:  Action and Adventure, Science Fiction and Fantasy, Superhero film CINEMATOGRAPHER: Newton Thomas Sigel   DISTRIBUTOR:  20th Century Fox  LOCATION:  United States RUNNING TIME: 144 minutes
Technical assessment: 3
Moral assessment: 3
CINEMA rating: V14
MTRCB rating: PG
The film opens with an event that happened thousands of years ago in Egypt—the ancient powerful mutant Apocalypse is being betrayed by his followers, keeping him entombed for centuries. Then fast forward to Year 1983—about ten years after the events of Days of Future Past, Charles Xavier aka Professor X (James McAvoy) is still running his school for the gifted that helps young mutants control their powers. Magneto (Michael Fassbender) on the other side of the earth is hiding and trying to live a peaceful, ordinary life with a new family—until a tragedy strikes. Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) is trying to escape the limelight that came with saving the world back in 1973 and is traveling in secret, saving mutants around the world from dangerous and terrible situations. Meanwhile, Apocalypse awakens from thousands of years of slumber—and poses a threat to re-shape or destroy the world as he had planned before in his evil likeness. He recruits his new four horsemen—Storm, Angel, Psylocke, and Magneto—to join forces with him as he is out to destroy Professor X and his mutant allies along with entire humankind.
X-Men Apocalypse is another visual spectacle meant to keep up with the hype of its previous installments and franchise. The film may be successful visually in terms of computer graphic effects, but it utterly fails to deliver a solid story. The entire running time is wasted on useless pursuits—like the weak villain who appears to be of ultimate power and strength yet still invests in recruiting mutants to back him up. The film lacks centrality; the point-of-view is confusing with varied character arcs and incohesive subplots.  In its entirety, the film is entertaining yet lacks soul despite stunning performances of the lead casts and impressive visuals. It feels tiresome and convoluted with too many characters and elements. Despite its apparent flaws, however, the concept of the franchise is still genius and one cannot discount the fact that it takes extra-ordinary talent to come out with such a consistent blockbuster.
This latest franchise of the popular series now takes on a macro-perspective with a central theme of an ultimate evil out to destroy the world, still at the backdrop of humans gifted with superhuman capacities tagged as mutants. The gift or power is seen in the film as having the potential of being either a blessing or a curse to humankind. While Professor X sees it as a blessing that needs to be enhanced for the betterment of humanity, here comes Apocalypse whose selfish interest would make him use his power to destroy the world. With that, the battle is between good and evil, with the good at times confusing our notion of good with their evil looks. This goes to show that goodness lies in the heart and is always beyond what the naked eye can see, as humans tend to be inhuman at times in wrongfully judging the other as evil based only on outer appearance. Still, the values presented in the film should be emulated—faith in the true God, the power of good over evil, team-spirit and cooperation, self-control over one’s power to use it for greater good, courage and bravery to fight for what is right. Humans may well learn from mutants—that they have gifts, unique gifts that must be enhanced and used for the purpose of making this world a better place to live in. Given the dominant theme of darkness and of visuals and images that are quite disturbing although in context, CINEMA finds X-Men Apocalypse as appropriate only for viewers 14 and above.