That’s so… X-Men!
As a film aficionado and as someone who teaches college level film courses I don’t get excited to watch a movie if I have to write a review about it. I love watching movies, and commenting on them, yes, but taking notes (virtually or in your mind) and having to keep up with the next scene of the movie make you miss the fun of it — sometimes at least. With that said, this is not a movie review, yet I knew I had to write about why me and my sister got so awestruck by everything about X-Men: Apocalypse. Aside from what the previous X-Men movies encompassed such as braininess, random jokes and pool of wholehearted of emotions; there was much more to the latest tentpole and that me and my sister were amazed. That is why we movie-talked, no actually whispered during the movie. And yes I am one of those people who love commenting on the scenes; and more so we started laughing when we started the “That’s so you when…” game, i.e. “That’s so you when you wake up” (pointing to the Apocalypse’s waking up after a 5600 years of sleep).
Thankfully I don’t look like this when I wake up.
— Spoilers Ahead! —
- The Opening Prologue
The astonishing roller coaster ride took us to Ancient Egypt.
The opening scene just screams from the rooftops (or pyramid tops in this case) that VR will be even more important in the near future. The scene takes place more than five thousand years ago in the Nile Valley, but it certainly makes you feel as if you were in a theme park while going through all the tunnels and all the cracks where light could barely enter.
It is so obvious that the entertainment industry will be shaped by what virtual reality can allow us to do. Clearly 3D isn’t going anywhere, and indeed I believe our movie experience will be more enhanced with added multisensory elements i.e. motion-weather-(maybe)smell, and mainstream movies will tend towards 4D cinema (though 4th dimension is never about motion or smell!)
More and more we will be seeing movies that “transport” us somewhere else, not through the power of emotions or intellectuality like the ancient Greek or Brechtian plays, but rather entertainment value will be determined by what a movie/show can do for us visually.
2. Apocalypse’s Name (En Sabah Nur)
Looks like someone hasn't had their morning coffee yet.
Sabah is morning in Turkish and in Arabic, and Nur is light in Arabic, so this is basically morning light, or dawn — remember though, he looked like hell when he woke up, so you wouldn’t want to say “Rise and shine” to him at all.
This scene is so important, he was put to sleep millenniums ago yet he awakens with a little bit of light that comes down through a crack opened because Agent Moira Mactaggert sneaked in to the tomb where he was being kept. You would expect him to be all angels and unicorns since he was woken up by sunlight; however he turns out to be a doomsday, just like his name.
Also isn’t it very obvious at this point that it is never a good idea to trap a weird man for a certain amount of time? (Of course never ever trap a man, that is a terrible idea anyway!) But remember The Phantom of the Opera when he was yelling Christine, “Sing, sing, my child!” That is basically on the same creepiness level as Apocalypse bringing his horsemen back to their full power by saying ‘Rise, rise, my child!’
3. Apocalypse’s awakening and learning process
Now that En Sabah Nur is awakened, he has to catch up with all that he had missed for thousands of years. And how does he do that? Through being connected. And this has nothing to do with anything God-like, nor it has any resemblance to any wellness or meditation program; rather he gets connected through television and absorbs all the information the media shoves into our beautiful brains. I thought that was very important, because as someone who hadn’t read the comics, up until here I was really expecting him to be some sort of savior. He receives all the data through TV and media, which explains why he becomes destructive.
4. Quicksilver’s show stealing sequence
This was definitely my favorite part of the film. They created such an elaborate sequence for which the cast and the crew rehearsed for about a week. The extraction scene was so dynamic and fun to watch (even though the scene was in slow motion except Quicksilver.) It helped Quicksilver establish himself as a hero while keeping his witty side. Doesn’t it just show that you can still have fun while you’re doing what you do the best? And of course, the theme song accompanying the scene had to be Eurythmics’ Sweet Dreams.
5. Magneto’s energy field
“Can’t touch this!”
I love Magneto yet I feel bad for him at this point — 1983. He is bad but he wants to be good; he just doesn’t know how. Also he believes he needs to be a bad guy because the world didn’t understand him or accepted him as he is: well, sometimes you have to make an extra effort to show that you are indeed on the good side no matter what has happened to you in the past, one can always choose to be good.
He builds a web of magnetic field around him when Raven and Quicksilver try to get through to him; and at this point both me and my sister looked at each other and knew who it reminded of to each us. We both exclaimed: “That’s so…your ex!”
We all have those people around us: “I’m not ok, do not touch me, let me enjoy my negative energy”. The best way to handle it is just to let them be, because you really wouldn't want to get into that bubble of magnetic field.
6. Prof. Xavier’s connecting to Apocalypse
This would make a great Snap filter.
This actually happens twice in the movie. The first one is when the Cerebro gets hacked by the world’s oldest hacker and the oldest sleeper aka Apocalypse; Charles feels connected to everyone on Earth. He says:
“I’ve never felt power like this before.”
It gave me goose bumps to hear that, because if you’ve ever felt this connected you’ll know what I mean, it sometimes happens through meditation sometimes through watching a beautiful sunset, however you experience it, it is such a wonderful feeling. Again, because Apocalypse was involved in the scene, everything goes downhill and the hacking starts. This is the point that Charles’ eyes started to look really scary and his pupils looked huge. And again my sister and I look at each other at the same same time and say : That is so Ernesto! (That is our cat and that is how he looks like when he’s hangry.)
“Can’t get you out of my head”
The second time this connection of Professor X and Apocalypse happens when their teams get into a duello. Apocalypse insists that they have to destroy the Earth and wipe out anyone who is weak whether human or mutant. He says:
“Together we will cleanse the Earth. Everything they’ve built will fall. And from the ashes of the world’ we’ll build a better one.”
Sorry, sunshine, you are absolutely wrong!
Because Apocalypse can harness almost any mutant power he wants, he wants to use Charles’ telepathic powers but Charles resists. He tells Charles that there is still a part of Charles that is connected to him and that becomes the very channel Charles gets into a (simulated) fight with him. The fight is taking place inside the mind of Charles, and as Charles gets more scared of Apocalypse, the villain becomes bigger and bigger in size — fear always does that, even to the point that Apocalypse pins Charles down to the floor. It’s never a good idea to engage in a psychological battle with someone who has a different energy level!
7. Unleashing the Phoenix
At the end of the story, it is a woman, Jean Grey, who saves it all, and she does that not through some sort of physical power but through mind power. Not only she set her powers free, but she also inspires every other mutant to use their powers against Apocalypse. Very self-explanatory.
The movie was based on the duality of the good and the bad, but rather it was about choices.
Even though Apocalypse had the power to exercise any kind of mutant power that made him the most powerful of all, he couldn’t survive; which brings about the question: Is ultimate power really powerful if you can’t even survive? Isn’t it even more important where you channel your (mutant) power?
That was the main question that made me and my sister engage in a deep dialogue, which links us to the pleasant surprise and to the very end of the movie — after a long line of credits: Wolverine!
