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4 Most Glaring Flaws In ‘X-Men: Apocalypse’ [Spoilers]

By Toni Matthews
Published on: 14:23 PST, May 29, 2016

I took a chance and saw X-Men: Apocalypse for myself. The low Rotten Tomatoes score would suggest not to bother. Still, I wanted to see with my own eyes just how bad X-Men was supposed to be. In actuality, I found X-Men: Apocalypse to be an enjoyable film.

It’s something that’s best enjoyed by turning off your brain and not thinking about certain inconsistencies too hard. Treated as a fun summer blockbuster, Apocalypse definitely delivers. It’s when you think your way through the film that the problems arise.

The more I think about X-Men: Apocalypse, the more certain plot issues annoy me. A few of them I suspected were going to be a problem before I even watched the movie. That was the fault of the X-Men: Days of Future Past. By working overtime to link the original trilogy to the reboot, it left room for plenty of plot holes; some of them became cringe-inducingly noticeable in X-Men: Apocalypse.

Even though I enjoyed Apocalypse, the glaring inconsistencies were rage-inducing. Here are the four major movie flaws that bugged me the most.

First and foremost, I wanted to scream at the sheer irony of Quicksilver confessing to Mystique that Magneto is his father. Why? Well, because as many X-Men fans know, Mystique is herself the mother of X-Man Nightcrawler. Despite the two characters interacting in the film – despite Mystique herself being the one to rescue the young mutant – this is never addressed.

It was hilariously frustrating for the movie to play up the secret parental connection between Quicksilver and Magneto (which itself isn’t revealed and possibly never will be), while leaving something arguably even more incredible undiscussed.

I mean, unlike Quicksilver, both Nightcrawler’s parents appeared in this X-Men prequel trilogy. Not only do these movies focus heavily on the Mystique character, but Nightcrawler’s father was featured in X-Men: First Class. He was then inexplicably killed off before someone had the bright idea they wanted to bring young Nightcrawler into the picture.

It’s funny to me how Bryan Singer is repeatedly more concerned at addressing the origin of hairstyles than addressing the connections between certain X-Men characters.

Apocalypse was built up as the ancestor of all mutants and his grand plan of transferring himself into the body of Charles Xavier was terrifying. However, much of what made Apocalypse terrifying was limited to pure potential. He opted to begin his empire building in the middle of nowhere. While thousands of CGI people were no doubt harmed, it would have been more horrifying if he built his empire in the middle of a heavily populated city.

All we saw was…sand. Even the scene where Magneto demolishes Auschwitz had considerably more emotion because that location is well-known and infamous. I guess the movie makers wanted to avoid the hot button issue of destroying millions of people. Still, I feel if Apocalypse were allowed to fully unleash his wrath on millions of people, it would have given his character more weight.

Unfortunately, most of his on-screen time was spent on a virtual scavenger hunt that, thanks to including future X-Men, ultimately led nowhere.

It will be great when X-Men decides to replace Jennifer Lawrence with an actress that actually wants to be in the movie. I know Fox is hoping to cash in on her popular Katniss Everdeen portrayal. That’s why we saw Jennifer and now the blue Raven Darkholme. That’s probably also why despite having amazing transformation powers, Mystique hardly did any of that in the movie.

It was embarrassingly obvious that Lawrence was there for face recognition alone.

The Wolverine cameo was ruined by the final trailer. Fox was so desperate for people to see this movie that they gave away the one surprise that would have made it interesting. It was a great throwback to the origin of “Weapon X.” A certain after credits scene gives X-Men fans more reasons to be excited about upcoming projects. And a certain notorious X-Men villain.

However, it was hard for me to get over a huge problem with this character’s introduction. If you recall, at the end of X-Men: Days of Future Past, Wolverine was seemingly left in the hands of William Stryker. However, it was immediately revealed that this was Raven in disguise.

https://youtu.be/uckWmZdnUMM

Yet Wolverine later was revealed to have been kidnapped and experimented on anyway. This severely complicates things. Despite implying that Mystique saved Wolverine, the movie left the circumstances of his capture off-screen — which unfortunately makes the cameo feel inorganic.

Unless we’re supposed to believe that Mystique allowed Wolverine to be captured, which given the prequel films’ desperation to rebrand her as an X-Man and hero, shouldn’t sit well. Heck, it didn’t even make sense within Days of Future Past as she spent quite a bit of the movie actively thwarting the mutant-hating Stryker.

This Apocalypse scene, while meant to be a great crowd-pleaser, ultimately resulted in some serious head scratching.

There were quite a few other issues to be sure, but these were the ones that interfered with my personal enjoyment of X-Men: Apocalypse. Some were unavoidable thanks to plot inconsistencies carried over from X-Men: Days of Future Past.

I feel had these problems been properly addressed or never put in a position to be so visible, Apocalypse would have been a truly stellar film.

Do you think X-Men: Apocalypse deserved to be panned or were critics too harsh? Share your thoughts below!

[Photo courtesy of 20th Century Fox]

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