X-MEN: APOCALYPSE

X-MEN: APOCALYPSE shows the young X-Men mutants and Professor Xavier battling an immortal mutant with godlike powers, who recruits four other mutants to destroy the human race and all its technology so they can rule supreme. X-MEN: APOCALYPSE is compelling and entertaining and, although the premise is sometimes unclear, it has strong moral elements and overt Christian content mixed with lots of action violence, brief foul language and some brief religious references that slightly undermine the Christian ones.

The movie opens in 3600 “BCE” (which can mean either Before the Common Era or Before the Christian Era, take your pick) in Ancient Egypt. The Egyptian ruler is Apocalypse, an immortal mutant who can accumulate the powers of other mutants by possessing their bodies in a bizarre ritual involving what looks like molten gold. Apocalypse is about to transfer his soul into a young mutant when a large group of rebels storm his pyramid palace yelling, “False god!” Apocalypse is able to transfer his soul, but the body becomes entombed as the rebels collapse the huge pyramid upon Apocalypse.

Cue the credits, which show a montage of historical highlights from Ancient Egypt to 1983. One of the images shows is an impressive picture, looking like a huge sculpture, of Jesus Christ carrying the cross to Calvary.

In 1983, Apocalypse is accidentally set free from his tomb in Cairo. Looking around, Apocalypse is enraged that humans no longer treat mutants as gods. So, he assembles a team of four other powerful mutants, including a disheartened Magneto. Apocalypse enhances their powers so he can destroy humankind and create a new world order.

Meanwhile, Charles Xavier, at his School for Gifted Children, gets wind of what’s happening and tries to connect with a woman he knows who works at the CIA. Apocalypse soon announces his intentions to the world and starts by using Xavier’s telepathic connection to the powerful Cerebro machine to send all the world’s nuclear missiles into outer space and blow them up. With help from Mystique, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Beast, Quicksilver, and a recently discovered Nightcrawler, Charles tries to stop Apocalypse and Magneto. However, the task of defeating Apocalypse proves to be much more difficult than Charles imagined.

The spectacle threatens to overwhelm X-MEN: APOCALYPSE, but Director Bryan Singer manages to keep the story and characters moving. Except for Evan Peters, who plays Quicksilver, the veteran actors excel the best, while the younger actors (even Jennifer Lawrence) seem to get lost. The characters here are just not quite as interesting as the characters in the Marvel superhero movies (see the most recent CAPTAIN AMERICA movie, CIVIL WAR). Perhaps Xavier needs another older character to guide the younger mutant students. Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique tries to fit that bill here, but she’s too young to play such a role. The X-Men also clearly miss Wolverine, though he does make a cameo in the story.

That said, X-MEN: APOCALYPSE is compelling and entertaining throughout. Even better, there are several overt Christian, redemptive elements that play a major role in the movie. There’s the image of Jesus Christ during the opening credits of course, but the movie also twice extols the power of prayer. In one unexpectedly long sequence, the Nightcrawler character (who becomes a Catholic in the X-Men comic books and tries to become a priest) prays to God before going into a battle. Later, a government official tells the President of the United States, “Our prayers were answered.” Also, after Apocalypse’s plan to destroy the human race is defeated, a character says that humanity was “saved by the grace of God.” This Christian content is accompanied by strong moral elements, including calls for peace between mutant humans and regular humans. Also, the heroes band together to stop the villains, who are consumed by hatred and (as is the case with Magneto) a desire for revenge. In addition, the top villain, Apocalypse, wants to control the minds of all humans so he can rule unopposed. The movie clearly sees this as evil.

Although the Christian, moral elements win the day, X-MEN: APOCALYPSE has some objectionable Anti-Christian, Non-Christian and Anti-Biblical content.

First, some of the mutants have occult-like powers such as telepathy and telekinesis. Although this is placed in a scientific context, it could lead to more of an acceptance by moviegoers of the occult.

Also, despite the movie’s overt positive references to Christ’s crucifixion and the grace of God, it contains a couple brief heretical, blasphemous moments. In one scene, a female agent from the CIA, who’s been investigating ancient stories about Apocalypse, says Apocalypse is always accompanied by four mutant helpers, like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Charles tells her that Apocalypse must have gotten that idea from the Bible. The woman replies, “Or, the Bible got that from him.” At another point, Apocalypse says that ancient people often thought of him as a god because of his power. He says they used to call him names like “Elohim” and “Ra.” Ra is the name of the Egyptian sun god, while “Elohim” is a plural form of two Hebrew words for God, “El” and “Eloah.” In fact, the Hebrew Bible often uses the word Elohim to describe the power, magnificence and transcendence of God (see Genesis 1:1 and Jeremiah 31:33) as well as His might, His creative power and His justice. The Hebrew word Elohim also accommodates the Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity (see Matthew 28:19). By allowing Apocalypse to refer to himself as Elohim, the filmmakers behind X-MEN: APOCALYPSE undermine and even contradict the other positive references to God, Jesus Christ and prayer in their movie. At the very least, this line of dialogue exhibits confusion and will breed more confusion in the real world.

Even so, however, Jewish and Christian viewers can take comfort in the fact that the movie’s other references to religion, God, Jesus Christ, and prayer are linked to the movie’s premise of good conquering evil. After all, it is Apocalypse himself who says that people in the past called him names like Elohim and Ra. So, his words here can be seen as a record of Apocalypse historically trying to appropriate such names in order to rule over ancient people as a “god.” In fact, El, the root word in Elohim, is a standard term for God in many Semitic languages of ancient times, including the Ugaritic language, Aramaic, Phoenician, and early forms of the Hebrew language, languages that have their origins back to 3750 B.C. and beyond. According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, Elohim occurs in the Hebrew Bible 2570 times, but the Hebraic proper name for God, Yahweh (or “I am who I am”) occurs more than six thousand times in the Bible. Interestingly, the Hebrew Bible also uses the word Elohim to describe false gods, angels, judges, and kings.

Happily, X-MEN: APOCALYPSE is free of any sexual content or explicit nudity, although Mystique’s original blue skin is covered by raised designs that hide her private parts. Also, although the movie contains an “f” word and a GD profanity, its foul language is significantly less than what Marvel recently has been inserting into its other superhero movies rated PG-13. There are also a few scenes in APOCALYPSE containing some slightly graphic or very strong violence that seems to cross the line. In one scene, for example, Wolverine is released from a very confined cell, and he starts to kill the soldiers who keep guard and abuse him. Although the camera doesn’t show his steel claws penetrating their flesh, there are a few shots with some blood splattering during Wolverine’s rampage. There are also a couple scenes where Apocalypse slits the throats of some people. In one of those scenes, the movie implies that Apocalypse is decapitating three men by slitting their throats using his power to manipulate sand and other material objects. The rest of the movie, however, is filled with lots of strong and light action violence, such as punching, kicking, stabbing, throwing characters against walls and other hard objects, and hitting people with energy blasts based in the mutant powers of the heroes and villains.

Because of the brief extreme violence and strong foul language, and the other brief negative content, MOVIEGUIDE® advises strong caution for X-MEN: APOCALYPSE.