Superb Screenplay and perfectly cast

Rating: 10/10 (26 July 2016)

X-Men Apocalypse. .The film succeeds as a gripping often fascinating entertainment and that is without doubt an achievement. The film begins with a panorama of timeless ripples of sand lapping at the base of a massive Pyramid whose blue iridescent Ankh alerts us to changed conditions on the ground. It is 3600 BCE, 500 years before the unification of the Upper and Lower Kingdoms. At that time the dominant cult was Horus, the source of the gold encasing of the antagonist En Sabah Nur (Apocalypse) played with skill by Oscar Isaac. Skill is needed given the over application of greenish make up that confines acting to the eyes and the odd self satisfied smile. Why not? RelIcs are to be observed or worshipped not interacted with. Over the establishing shot we hear the wise voice of the Professor Xavier, the excellent James McAvoy who at the end will experience a physical transformation as his hair dissolves and he becomes the figure of Zen authority so memorably played by Patrick Stewart. Given the work it takes to bring down Apocalypse, thoughtful exhaustion is note perfect.
"Mutants born with extraordinary abilities and yet still they are children stumbling in the dark, searching for guidance , a gift can often be a curse " There is no better way to begin really. This is a trope Mr Kinman plays like a virtuoso; the ambiguities of power. Within the figure of Apocalypse we see the embodiment of the gift that is the poison, the creation of stability through destruction. Apocalypse has an agenda which nicely bridges the world of Pharaonic thought with well as its modern version the magic of fascism.
The annual inundation of the Nile, the flooding that made agriculture possible was guaranteed by rituals of worship and continuities of royal control. The body of the Pharaoh itself was to be preserved forever, continuities were managed on a terrestrial and celestial basis.
The misconceived effect of loyalty to supreme power (fertility of the Nile delta) is reiterated historically with the lure of fascism. Isn't the extreme of right wing discourse a clarion call to return to the old days, of better times when things weren't so bad? Men were men and women were helpmates. This return is in part facilitated by forms of social cleansing, a purge.
Mutants find him attractive in part because as Professor Xavier has already told us they are lost children in a cruel world. How quickly they respond to his paternalism and an augmentation of their mutant powers promising liberation from past enslavement, making the world the way it should be. Apocalypse knows how the world works, he learns it from the young Storms' telly, sifting through all the paranoiac images of the 80's to conclude that it is nuclear weaponry that is the strongest control mechanism. In the same sequence he concludes that Magneto is one of the strongest mutants. That is until he encounters Professor X within Cerebro (the shiny aluminium augmentation of his mind, a pre internet world wide web that first appeared in 1964) that allows him to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. We find Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto working in a Polish steel mill, and living with a sweet wife and daughter in a tree filled paradise. This of course would have been a reality that might have been possible had there been no final solution and the consequent experiments conducted on him in Auschwitz which increased his mutant strength would not have occurred. Note the timelessness of his workers cap, the simplicity of the home. This was precisely the idyll that was disrupted by the rise of the Reich , the steel mills of Eastern Europe co opted to produce war materials and steel and coal were the items most needed.
Magnetos dream world hovers between two realities. When finally the thing that makes him different is exposed (saving a workmate from being crushed the instability caused by resurrection in distant Egypt of Apocalypse) the consequences are identical to that of wearing a yellow star during the Reich. There is the knock at the door, thugs outside, the slaughter of innocence. Magneto goes through it all again, as his true being is exposed only the uniforms are different. Again the cause of this moment is the irruption of the fascist impulse as embodied by apocalypse.
What better way to seduce Magneto then than to take him to the physical memorial to his past; the abandoned shell of Auschwitz. Naturally its destruction can only be the destruction of a building, removing the shell neither erases memory or its future as an object of pain but it works for a while.
The point is that the destruction we see, is precisely the promise of Fascism, the promise of a new way by simply tearing down the old. The transference of the aberrant Apocalypse into the modern world can only be defeated by modernisms impulses of democracy and consultative collaborative management. "You will never win" says a virtually crushed Professor from under the super enlarged fist of arrogant Apocalypse "You are aloneI am not."
This choreography of team talent against an individual oppressor has become so ubiquitous that is is beyond formulaic, it is inevitable. Think of the Avengers, the Justice league, the Fantastic Four, even a team whose boardroom might be more chaotic like the Suicide Squad. That's not to mention the multitude of cameos from other super beings that have appeared in films like Ant Man, Captain America and I'll stop there.