Our intrepid reporter visits the School for Gifted Youngsters and finds out if he's got any tricks up his sleeve.

Thanks to the X-Men and their valiant efforts against their renegade counterparts, mutants have become hip. Well, as hip as they can be in a chaotic world where superpowered humans duke it out and lay waste to cities in the process. Take X-Men: Apocalypse, which takes place a decade after the '70s craziness of X-Men: Days of Future Past and involves a 5,000-year-old mutant named Apocalypse who wants world domination. It's due out on Blu-ray and DVD on October 4 and is available now on FandangoNOW.

To celebrate the release in grand fashion, Fox sent a group of reporters back to 1983 and the newly reconstructed Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters to find out what it is like to be a mutant student. Barring jet lag from the future, we arrived at 1407 Graymalkin Lane in Westchester County (near Toronto) at 7:30 a.m. to be greeted cheerily by none other than Jubilee (aka Lana Condor) herself.

First, a tour of the mansion. Professor X's office was lined with an impressive plethora of literature, and displayed right on his desk was the chess set he’d play with his old frenemy Erik Lennsher (aka Magneto) in the original X-Men movie. We sauntered down the hall to the office of Hank McCoy (aka Beast), and after donning his glasses I found I could whip up a mental maelstrom of papers and desktop detritus. (Wait, isn't that a Jean Grey power?) Something was either really askew or I really do have telepathic powers.

Next we visited the bedrooms of Nightcrawler, Jean Grey and Jubilee, and Scott Summers/Cyclops and Quicksilver. High ceilings, spacious rooms, and old-world charm in a 100-year-old building -- my dorm was never this cool. Nightcrawler's chamber looked older and darker and seemed very apropos for someone who's a little behind on modern pop culture. His domestic accoutrements were a little more spare than the others and included his crucifix, some light reading (The Afro-Asian World: A Cultural Understanding), and his Michael Jackson-ish red-and-black jacket. I'm a bit confused as to why he would keep the electrified casket he was transported in during his cage match enslavement, but okay...

By contrast, Jean and Jubilee's room popped with pastel colors along with Duran Duran and Madonna posters, a boom box, and scrunchies. They also had a killer courtyard view. Scott and Quicksilver's room was a bit different: '80s sci-fi merch for films like TRON, Star Wars and Back To The Future, issues of Omni magazine scattered about, toys, pop records, plaid bedspreads and a VHS camcorder.

The guys' bathroom was fogged with dust and steam. A pile of rubble indicated that Scott/Cyclops had recently a bit of an accident, and by that I mean he blasted part of a stall to bits. I also noticed that Scott's visor, the one designed by Hank McCoy, was sitting on a dresser. So... was he RIGHT NOW walking around with his eyes closed? Inquiring minds... Speaking of the silvery speedster, it was nice to view Quicksilver's trademark monochromatic jacket and shoes.

Partway through the day I chatted with Jubilee for a few minutes. While she appears in a few scenes in the new movie, others were cut, including a great sequence (included on the Blu-ray deleted scenes) in which she, Scott and Jean take Nightcrawler to a mall to go shopping, play video games and experience a nice Icee brain freeze. Jubilee did get to show off her powers a tiny bit when she restarted the Joust game that Scott and Jean were playing after they depleted their quarter allotment.

Jubilee can be very accommodating to her fellow students and certainly made Nightcrawler feel at ease as she showed him around the school, although her initial interaction with Scott Summers was a bit more standoffish. "I've been here for 10 years," she tells me when we sit down for a quick chat in a hidden room located behind a secret door in the main hallway. "This is my place, this is my kingdom, so when Scott came in I kind of had attitude towards him. My life is pretty amazing here, much better than it was on the streets."

Jubilee stays on her game because "everyone's really educated here," she says. "You're 16 but have a college degree, really educated." She also has her physical side to keep up considering her gymnastic abilities. In that regard, as far as the recent X-film, she declares, "I'm happy that it ended with everyone being trained as soldiers." Hopefully we'll see more Jubilee in future movies.  

Speaking of training, Sasha Hall from Woods North Archery guided me through a quick tutorial and actually showed me how to aim right. Half my shots made it fairly close to the center, and I don't think that was a coincidence. Granted, I can't mentally alter the trajectory of my shots like Jean Grey, nor am I a killer shot like Hawkeye from the Avengers, but I was pleased.

My final big test? Taking on Cerebro. Normally the domain of Professor Charles Xavier, it was opened up to aspiring telepaths. The test was simple: don the professor's metal helmet, watch a replay of the psychic takeover of Xavier by Apocalypse, and simply concentrate on saving the world. I should have known this was easier said than done. I guess there's either too much going on in my head or I had no idea what I was doing. I had no hope of saving humanity. In the end, I probably wouldn't make the grade if I applied to Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. But I gave it my best shot.

The time came to jet back to 2016. Was that one long, strange daydream? I pondered. Probably. Upon my return, I wondered if Jubilee would recognize me on the street today if I bumped into her. Or would that be the other way around? Either way, things are not quite as dire now as they were in 1983. I guess those X-Men have done all right after all.

(Fandango contributor Bryan Reesman began reading X-Men comics in the '80s. He wonders if Count Nefaria or the Starjammers will make it into an X-Men flick. Probably not.)