X-Men: Apocalypse Trailer - Review and Recap

The first trailer for the upcoming X-Men movie is here. And it looks promising.

After helming X-Men: Days of Future Past, Bryan Singer returns to the director's chair. As is typical of a X-Men film, this one has a large ensemble cast. Joining the regulars (James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult) are newcomers: Oscar Isaac as the titular antagonist En Sabah Nur/Apocalypse, Tye Sheridan as  Scott Summers/Cyclops, Sophie Turner as Jean Grey, Alexandra Shipp as Ororo Munroe/Storm, Ben Hardy as Warren Worthington III/Angel, Lana Condor as Jubilation Lee/Jubilee, Olivia Munn as Betsy Braddock/Psylocke, Kodi Smit-McPhee as Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler and Tómas Lemarquis as Caliban.

Check out the trailer below:

The trailer manages to get one's attention without giving too much of the plot (or) crucial plot/character developments away.

Here is a synopsis of the trailer: Jean Grey is having visions of mass destruction across the globe. She is not comforted by Charles Xavier's assertions that her premonitions are just dreams and will not come to fruition. Moira informs Xavier about a mutant who could quite possibly be the very first one to walk the Earth.

Unfortunately, Jean was right in her thoughts and Apocalypse is here. He has a definite purpose in mind: to destroy the world and create a better one in its place. To this end, he recruits Magneto, Storm, Angel and Psylocke to be his four horsemen. Nice touch there with Moira contending that the Bible took this idea from the mutant himself and not the other way around as Havoc thinks.

We get a look at some of the destruction caused by Apocalypse and his horsemen as the X-Men struggle to prevail over such an powerful enemy. The trailer concludes with James McAvoy's Charles Xavier getting his full bald look. McAvoy makes a fantastic Xavier and I prefer his version over Patrick Stewart's. This decision by Bryan Singer wins brownie points for the trailer right away.

If there was one mutant who gets a bit shortchanged, that would be Michael Fassbender's Magneto. He has no dialogues at all (kind of like Henry Cavill's Superman in the Comic Con trailer for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice).

On the other hand, if there was a mutant who gets too much attention, that would be Jennifer Lawrence's Raven (not Mystique). The significant aspect is that Lawrence does not have the blue body-paint at any point throughout the trailer. I guess the studio and producers want to capitalize on having Lawrence in the movie rather than the fact that she is playing Mystique. Even the first shot featuring her with others deliberately reminds one of her character Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games.

The trailer also gives us a look at the new and a younger X-Men team consisting of Cyclops, Jean Grey and Nightcrawler suited up for action. As a fan of Cykes, I enjoyed the brief but powerful scene of Scott Summers going full optic blast against an unseen opponent/obstacle.

Finally, we come to Apocalypse himself. He looks and sounds very much like what a God-like mutant would do. There were complaints about the character being not big enough in the promotional images so far. Bryan Singer seems to have paid attention and we get a beautiful shot of just how big En Sabah Nur can get if needed. His motto is: “Only the Strong will survive”.




Apocalypse is the main antagonist to X-Men just as how Darkseid is to the Justice League or Doomsday is to Superman. Warner Bros. and Zack Snyder seem to be either clueless or just plain lazy with regards to Doomsday as the recent trailer suggests. Bryan Singer shows us how to pull off such an important super-villain in the right way. Live and Learn, Warner Bros.

Other points of interest: More Quicksilver, which is a good thing.

Bryan Singer's X-Men released in 2000 started the current Hollywood craze for Superhero genre. It is also the longest running Superhero movie franchise. Despite a few hiccups here and there (mainly X-Men Origins: Wolverine), the series has produced some of the best movies in the genre.

Credit to Bryan Singer who has been the driving force behind these movies. He has been instrumental in making the casting choices that have made these movies so great - From the great Ian McKellen, Rebecca Romijn, Hugh Jackman and James Marsden to the current crop of actors including James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Evan Peters. Hoping that he would have the same luck with the new set of actors cast as the younger versions of mutants.

The X-Men movies also enjoy a good blend of humor and pathos, like Richard Donner's Superman: The Movie and Christopher Nolan's Batman movies. Unlike both the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) movies that tend to be too jokey or the DC Extended Universe (DCEU) movies that are too serious for their own good.

In Bryan Singer, we trust.

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X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Recap and Review

This post discusses the movie in detail. Readers who wish to avoid plot spoilers are recommended to skip the rest of the post.

The movie opens in a futuristic world, where mutants and the humans who support them are systemically eliminated by mutant hunting robots called Sentinels. Most of the mutants have been captured/killed.

We get a measure of the Sentinel's effectiveness when they attack a bunch of mutants. Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page), Blink (Bingbing Fan), Colossus (Daniel Cudmore), Sunspot (Adan Canto), Warpath (Booboo Stewart), Iceman (Shawn Ashmore) and Bishop (Omar Sy) are no match for their nemeses. The sentinels adapt quickly to their opponent's powers and easily subdue them.

As Kitty explains to Professor X (Patrick Stewart), Magneto (Ian McKellen), Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and Storm (Halle Berry), her ability to transport a fellow mutant's consciousness back in time helps avoid these attacks.

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Professor Xavier decides that the only way to prevent this grim future is to stop Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) from assassinating Dr Boliver Trask (Peter Dinklage), the scientist who developed Sentinels. This 1973 incident sparked the outrage against mutants. Mystique is captured shortly thereafter and her unique shapeshifting abilities are used to make the Sentinels a highly adaptable and undefeatable mutant killers.

Wolverine volunteers to be the time traveler due to his healing abilities. Wolverine enlists the help of the younger versions of Professor Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr, played by James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender respectively.

The younger Charles has since lost his way after the incidents in X-Men: First Class. Hank McAvoy/Beast (Nicholas Hoult) has devised a solution that helps Charles walk, but in return suppresses his mutant powers.

Magneto is being held in a prison stronghold under the Pentagon, after being implicated in JFK's assassination. Quicksilver/Pietro Maximoff (Evan Peters) helps release Magneto in a dazzling rescue mission.

The rest of the movie deals with the group's attempts to stop Mystique from her single-minded mission to kill Trask. The climax alternates between the aforementioned event in 1973 and the future, where the Sentinels have tracked down the mutants.

Bryan Singer returns to the comic book franchise, he started way back in 2000. He has always focussed on the analogy between X-Men and the persecuted sections of human society. This time, he also highlights the fact that we are what we make of ourselves. Our lives are dictated by the choices we make.

As finely executed the action scenes are and the humor is enjoyable, this crucial message is the best aspect of X-Men: Days of Future Past.

Another enjoyable aspect is the number of nods to the previous movies (X-Men, X2: X-Men United, X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men: First Class). It is quite understandable that X-Men Origins: Wolverine was completely ignored.

The movie has a large ensemble cast (even by the usual Bryan Singer's X-Men movie standards).

To Singer's credit, he does an excellent job. Each character and actor gets their fair share of the limelight. Obviously, not all of them get the same amount of screentime. Ian McKellen, Halle Berry, Anna Paquin, Shawn Ashmore as well as the newly introduced set of mutants are more like extended cameos.

I liked the teamwork between Storm and Ian McKellen's Magneto in the climax. It was a rare collaboration and an epic one at that.

Hugh Jackman, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Jennifer Lawrence get a lion's share of the screen time. Hugh Jackman provides most of the humor through his one-liners. His work as Logan in this movie is a return to form, as seen in the first two X-Men movies (also directed by Singer, no coincidence I am sure).

Jennifer Lawrence is adequate as Mystique. I personally prefer the Rebecca Romijn version. Rebecca made Mystique the classic femme fatale and a genuine menace. Jennifer does not have the same impact in her performance.

James McAvoy gives a poignant turn as the mentally tortured Charles Xavier. Like the previous movie, he has the more underplayed role (compared to Fassbender's Magneto) and he continues to make a great Prof X.

Equally good but criminally underused is Evan Peters as Quicksilver. As noted in other reviews, his rescue of Magneto is quite possibly the best scene in the movie - superbly conceptualized and executed. Evan's performance is amusing and hilarious. It is a shame that he is written off so quickly. Hope we will see more of him in the upcoming sequel: X-Men: Apocalypse.

All said and done, the movie belongs to Michael Fassbender (at least in my humble opinion). He is magnificent as Magneto and takes the movie to a whole different class (no pun intended) by his sheer presence.

Fassbender's Magneto goes berserk in the climax and this will be a feast for any fan of the Master of Magnetism.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Peter Dinklage's portrayal of the movie's main antagonist, Dr. Boliver Trask. The movie does not present a clear explanation for Trask's drive to develop the Sentinels to get rid of mutants.

In X2: X-Men United, William Stryker had similar ambitions, but at least Brian Cox managed to leave an impression in the role. Interestingly, a younger version of William Stryker is played by Josh Helman in this movie. He is kind of a right hand man to Dinklage's Trask and is equally lifeless in the role, just maintaining a smug/angry expression throughout.

There are also cameos by James Marsden (Cyclops), Famke Janssen (Jean Grey), Kelsey Grammer (Beast) and Anna Paquin (Rogue) in the closing scene, as Wolverine wakes up in the X-Mansion.

The latest X-Men movie shares its name with the 1981 storyline, written by Chris Claremont and John Bryne. There are significant differences between the two. In the original story, Kitty Pryde travels back in time to stop the assassination of Senator Robert Kelly (played by Bruce Davison in the 2000 movie X-Men) by Mystique and her Brotherhood of Mutants. In the movie, Wolverine is sent back by Kitty to stop Mystique from killing Dr Boliver Trask.

Though the movie gets chatty and slows down considerably at some points, the climax and Fassbender's performance make up for these lapses.

Highly recommended for fans of Michael Fassbender/Magneto.

PS: Do not miss the post credits teaser for the sequel: X-Men: Apocalypse. The scene shows a group of people chanting “En Sabah Nur” and worshipping a hooded figure as he assembles a huge pyramid using the powers of telekinesis. The mysterious figure is revealed to be a grey skinned young man. Also seen in the background are the four Horsemen of Apocalypse.

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