By the time Bryan Singer’s “X-Men: Apocalypse”movie hits theaters on May 27, 2016, the Age of Apolcalypse event will be 21 years old. If you have never read the saga, pop over to your LCS and try to grab a trade.
There are only two relative certainties at this point; its release date (May 27, 2016) and its theme – kinda. The obvious money is on an “Age of Apocalypse” film, as the domain “ageofapocaplypsemovie.com” has been owned by Fox for quite some time, and one time travel film would easily lead into another. And since not only Bishop but also Blink are being introduced in 2014’s “Days of Future Past,” we probably just should have seen it coming.
I don’t write about comics very often on the site. I don’t really know how. I know what I like and why I like it, but I’m not a skilled or educated artist so I feel like I’m nowhere near qualified to decide if it’s “good” or not. And comic ‘verses get so batshit insane with timelines and events and crossovers (I still have a migraine from “Blackest Night”) that I rarely buy every book, so I can’t really comment fairly on a story either.
Except for this one.
The Age of Apocalypse event began in 1995. It replaced Marvel’s Earth-616 for a brief time, and the title of every “X” book was replaced with an alternate, punny name (“Excalibur” became “X-Calibre,” for instance). I will try to summarize the events in as succinct and cohesive way as possible, but superheroes and time travel and multiverse oh my.
The alternate timeline is created when Legion, Charles Xavier’s son, decides to time travel and kill Magneto. But since Xavier is such a stand up guy, he takes one for the team and dies instead. Magneto then becomes the savior of the mutant population. In his stead as villain, we get Apocalypse, the five thousand year old immortal first mutant. On the alternate Earth (295, I think?), everything we know about our favorite mutants is topsy turvy. Cyclops and Havok are bad guys alike, Henry McCoy is a torture master, Magneto and Rogue have a baby named Charles, and M.O.D.O.K. is a Xavier clone hooked up to Cerebro. Apocalypse has hoards and Horsemen; there is espionage, treachery, defecting and heartbreak when your favorite X-Man inevitably dies. And that’s not a spoiler.
The filmic possibilities that can come from tackling this epic are almost endless, and thinking about plopping down in the sweet spot of my local cinema to see this play out has made me starry eyed. I have been an X-Men reader for thirty years. Three of the films make me ecstatic with nostalgia and fangirly goodness, and I didn’t hate the other (you can figure it out). I get goose bumps from the “Days of Future Past” trailer. And today when Singer dropped this bomb I actually got just a little misty. There’s beauty in comics. There’s something special that doesn’t come with any other medium, and something intimate that you get by appreciating the work of five or so people, especially when you’re under the blanket with a flashlight. But there’s something else entirely that you get when you see these characters on screen, especially when they are done as brilliantly as the recent Marvel characters have been. And as I get older, there’s also the wonder I feel when I see younger people suddenly become completely immersed in these classic worlds. This story reached as far as Wakanda and Atlantis and involved human civilians and superheroes alike. The knowledge that I’m probably going to see a realization of Mister Sinister makes me bounce around like a fool. And the mere possibility of me seeing my long time favorites like Chamber, the St Croix family, Soaron (OK he’s not a long time favorite but if you tell me you don’t want to see Soaron even as an Easter Egg I will straight up call you a fibber), and – oh god I shudder at the possibility – Dazzler, flat out brings me to such a young-again mentality that I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep tonight. Carol Danvers on screen would be a great segue into a third Avengers movie I’M JUST SAYIN’.
But the real promise of an amazing and fun (as it should be) superhero movie comes from this simple premise: Singer can do whatever the hell he wants. He can alter Earth-295 (ne 616, or is it the other way around?) into an unrecognizable wasteland and bring in the most obscure characters and make Donald Blake a human bad guy all he wants, because the Age of Apocalypse never happened.
I totally just blew your mind, didn’t I?