While other superhero sagas have waned, withered and eventually dwindled to nothing in the past decade, X-Men has risen from the abject horrors of 2006’s The Last Stand to the mighty heights of 2014’s remarkably watchable Days of Future Past. Now Messrs McAvoy and Fassbender are returning with the wonderful J-Law in tow for May 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse, the first trailer for which has just dropped. So what does it tell us?
Oscar Isaac’s Apocalypse looks like Darth Vader crossed with something out of Assassin’s Creed
Awakened from his slumber after several millennia, the godlike mutant Apocalypse is a chrome and matt black monstrosity, his metallic carapace apparently fused to his humanoid torso so that it’s impossible to see where one begins and the other ends. 20th Century Fox have wisely opted to use extensive makeup instead of CGI – learning, perhaps, from Marvel’s rubbish rendition of Thanos in Guardians of the Galaxy. This means we’ll actually get to see the excellent Isaac under the mask, rather than his motion-captured spectre.
The X-Men are his tiny, mewling, pathetic puppets
The only drawback is that Isaac is only 5ft 7in tall. But the supervillain appears to be capable of size-shifting so no one’s going to be pushing him around any time soon. In fact, both James McAvoy’s Professor X and Michael Fassbender’s Magneto appear utterly powerless in the face of their new enemy. This looks like one of those X-Men movies in which the two former friends are forced to pair up to take on a greater foe – which could pay dividends if it works as well as it did in X-Men: Days of Future Past.
Bryan Singer is building a Ghostbusters-like backstory of ancient deities
In the comics, Apocalypse was the first mutant human, born more than 5,000 years ago. In the most famous instalment, 1995’s Age of Apocalypse, the immortal emerges as the new ruler of an Earth on which mutants have enslaved their human counterparts. To enhance the backstory on film, it looks as if Singer has borrowed liberally from supernatural adventure fantasy fare such as Indiana Jones, The Mummy and Ghostbusters. Apocalypse explains that he has previously been known as Ra, Krishna and Yahweh. CIA agent Moira MacTaggert (Rose Byrne) is on hand to explain that the bad guy will recruit four followers to help him in his reign of destruction. Any minute now we can expect him to transform into the Stay Puft marshmallow man and go trampling round Manhattan.
The new X-Men babies might be more than just hangers-on
Apocalypse could well be Jennifer Lawrence’s final turn as the mutant Mystique, whose appearance in the X-Men movies has coincided with the saga’s best reviews and performances at the box office. In order to fill the void she would leave, Fox has drafted in the likes of Game of Thrones’ Sophie Turner as the new Jean Grey, Olivia Munn as Psylocke and Alexandra Shipp as Storm. It looks as if they will each have a greater part to play than the superfluous Gap model teens who cluttered up the misfiring X-Men: First Class. We also get a brief glimpse of Evan Peters’s fabulously languid, time-tripping Quicksilver, who will surely be called upon to help out in more extended circumstances than his brilliant cameo in Days of Future Past.
James McAvoy’s Professor X is finally bald
In the comics, Charles Xavier is folically challenged from birth, slowly losing his hair over time. But Fox has so far chosen to give us a lushly coiffed version of the character in the shape of the excellent McAvoy, presumably to help differentiate him from the older Patrick Stewart. Now, in the closing shot of the trailer, we finally get to see the Scottish actor in canonically correct form, shaven-headed and in his iconic wheelchair. It’s a fine bonce, though the lack of hair has the unfortunate side-effect of making McAvoy look younger and less statesmanlike than he has previously appeared. How will he lose his hair? Chances are it will have something to do with being scared half to death by the sudden arrival on Earth of his terrifyingly omnipotent new nemesis.
