10 WTF Moments In X-Men: Apocalypse

There are numerous problems with X-Men: Apocalypse, Bryan Singer's closing movie in the First Class trilogy. Considering that the film's such a complex arrangement of characters old and new and of dozens of intertwining storylines, and considering it was put together in a relatively short period of time, it's perhaps not surprising that it came out to be a bit of a mess. As such, Apocalypse is full of WTF moments, some intentional and many more regrettably not-so-much. Here, we've listed ten moments from the film that are liable to lead to raised eyebrows and lots of involuntary chin-stroking. Of course, there will be spoilers for those of you who haven't seen Apocalypse yet, so if you still haven't caught the latest X-Men flick in theatres, you may want to bookmark this page and return once you have. 10) The Unexpectedly Brutal Opening Scene There are times when X-Men: Apocalypse pushes the PG-13 boundaries pretty forcefully. The titular villain's fiery, melty death at the end of the film is fairly unflinching, while Wolverine's berserker rampage - complete with copious shots of blood and of Logan sinking his claws into the soldiers trying to apprehend him - looks like test footage for next year's R-rated Wolverine film. The most brutal moment in the movie, however, can be found right at the beginning. As En Sabah Nur's worshippers attempt to prevent their deity from transferring into another body, his Four Horsemen use their powers to go to town on the assailants, variously dissolving and crushing them like a car compacter. The sheer WTF-ness of the moment comes from two things: 1) the inventive, almost Cronenbergian-style body horror of the killing, and 2) how Bryan Singer managed to get the scene past the censors. 9) Meet The Summers X-Men: First Class is set in 1962 and in that movie, Havok aka Alex Summers is an army prisoner, putting him in the age range of the actor who played him: Lucas Till, 20 at the time the movie was made. X-Men: Apocalypse is set 21 years on, in 1983, making Alex Summers now a man in his early 40s. (Put aside the fact that he looks nowhere near that for the time being, because Bryan Singer has made no attempt to age any character in Apocalypse.) It's a surprise, then, when we're introduced to Alex's parents and discover they too are early middle-age, played by Ryan Hollyman and Joanne Boland, who happens to be 41, or roughly the same age as her on-screen child. Mr. and Mrs. Summers spend their scene looking for answers as to why their more age-appropriate son Scott is a mutant, but it looks like Mom and Dad have some explaining of their own to do. 8) Oscar Isaac's Makeup Those early pictures of Oscar Isaac as Apocalypse weren't very promising were they? There was the usually swoonsome actor, slathered in makeup and decked out in some weird faux-ancient threads, practically glowing purple with a suspiciously embarrassed-looking Olivia Munn stood by his side. Frankly, he looked like Ivan Ooze from the 1995 Power Rangers movie. Well, now the film is here, and we get to judge the final result for ourselves. Unfortunately, En Sabah Nur is about as ridiculous and non-threatening as those preview shots suggested. Lo and behold, Isaac still looks like Ivan fucking Ooze, and the kicker is the layer of makeup prevents Isaac from ever being able to properly express himself, leaving the actor looking desperately constipated for a sizable portion of the film. 7) Learning From Television Remember in Michael Bay's Transformers when the Autobots reveal that they learned how to speak English from the "world wide web"? Remember how fucking stupid that was? Well, X-Men: Apocalypse goes even stupider than that. In order to catch up with centuries of developments, En Sabah Nur taps into a TV and, somehow, sees before him all of recent human history. There are a few problems with this. First of all, television sets in 1983 weren't part of some interconnected system like the internet, full of unlimited information which some ancient being could learn from. Secondly, how exactly does Apocalypse hack into this worldwide television network in the first place? He's millennia old - how/why would he have even developed the power to do that? What use would that have been in ancient Egypt? 6) The Destruction Of Auschwitz Apocalypse, as the first fully-fledged disaster movie in the X-Men franchise, appropriately plays the disaster movie game by levelling landmarks like it's going out of style. The Sydney Opera House and Brooklyn Bridge are just two famous spots that get taken out during Magneto's metal-shredding rampage. Unfortunately, though, Bryan Singer doesn't stop there. He also finds space in his movie to tear up Auschwitz, the site of one of the gravest scenes from history. As a general rule, blockbuster movies should probably avoid going anywhere near the Holocaust, and maybe keep away from Auschwitz specifically; for some reason, such things just don't seem to mix with popcorn entertainment. The X-Men movies have handled the Holocaust sensitively before, but somehow Magneto tearing Auschwitz apart in some frenzied big-budget set-piece feels a tad more ill-advised. 5) Apocalypse The Peace-Lover What with his nickname being Apocalypse, you'd think En Sabah Nur would understand the role he's supposed to play in the latest X-Men film. Though his plan is never entirely clear, there's a basic understanding that he's generally going to wipe out the human race, cleanse the Earth and start over, presumably getting Magneto to build loads of those weird metal temples on the ashes. It makes perfect sense, then, when Apocalypse manipulates all the world's silo and sub personnel to fire their nukes - Apocalypse wants to kill everyone, so why not wipe them out using nuclear armageddon? Only, for some reason, Apocalypse instead fires the Earth's payload into space, thus saving humanity from the nuclear threat for good, confusingly suggesting that he might secretly be some kind of peace-loving anti-nuker, rather than the villain we all suspect. 4) Havok's Death You know mutants are going to die in an X-Men movie subtitled Apocalypse. And they do, just not in ways you expect. Alex Summers, aka Havok, aka he with the similarly-aged parents, is a fairly expendable character not seen since First Class bar a minor cameo, so it makes sense that Singer would choose to waste him as a way of highlighting the threat of Apocalypse and his Horsemen. What makes less sense is that Singer kills Havok off-screen, and during Quicksilver's upbeat, musical rescue sequence no less. Tonally the whole thing feels off, while treating Alex Summers' death as an afterthought when his brother Scott is a new, integral part of the cast doesn't ring true. It feels like Singer and the writers are clearing house of a not particularly well-loved character, without putting any effort into disguising the fact. 3) Professor X's Baldness Explained Modern blockbuster cinema has a strange relationship with famously bald characters. Batman V Superman explained away Lex Luthor's shiny pate by making him a shaven-headed convict, while Spectre gave Ernst Stavro Blofeld all his recognizable traits minus the chrome dome. And now, in X-Men: Apocalypse, Charles Xavier's defining feature is put down to En Sabah Nur's unsuccessful, hair-shedding attempt to transfer his mind into Charles'. Broadly, it appears as though Hollywood has never heard of male pattern baldness, and what's weird about this Apocalypse scene is the convoluted way in which Singer and his writing team try to explain Xavier's hair loss, like it's some crucial plot point. The side-effects of Apocalypse's mind-transfer procedure are baffling: otherwise completely unaffected, the Professor's only adverse reaction is that his head hair drops out (the eyebrows are fine, though). 2) Apocalypse And Xavier's Mind Battle Arriving in the middle of the explode-y, mutant-heavy final fight, the 'mind battle' between Xavier and a gigantic Apocalypse makes for a refreshing mini set-piece of its own. Problem is, like far too much of the movie, it doesn't make any sense. Here are two characters 'fighting' in a scuffle that exists only in the mind, with one of them eventually physically defeated by it. Charles is clearly weakened by this fake fight that takes place in his dreams, and is forced to call on his fellow X-Men to defeat En Sabah Nur for him. It brings up the all-too-prevalent problem of inconsistent powers in Apocalypse. Since when, for example, could X-Men physically defeat other X-Men using just the power of imagination? And if the fight's all in Charles' head, why doesn't he just imagine himself being bigger to meet the giant Apocalypse on his level? 1) Angel's Death Proving the X-Men franchise still doesn't know what to do with the Angel character, Apocalypse presents you with a new Warren Worthington III, played by Ben Hardy, only to fumble him as badly as The Last Stand did Ben Foster's version. He gets a flashy intro, battling the Blob and Nightcrawler in some seedy underground club, and quite significantly becomes one of Apocalypse's Four Horsemen - before, like Havok, being unceremoniously killed. As with Havok, Angel's death is abrupt, and the question we're left with is this: why even introduce Angel in the first place? Are we really supposed to feel anything when we know next-to-nothing about this character? It's reminiscent of Marvel's baffling decision to introduce fan-favorite Quicksilver for the first time in Age of Ultron, only to kill him off shortly after. Wouldn't it have been a better idea to maybe save Angel for future movies, keeping him around along with the other newbies?