What went wrong with X Men Apocalypse?

[Divine Spark]

What kid of X-men team has Jubilee as a member before they have Cyclops?

There was no X-Men team until the end of the movie.

Phoenix outta nowhere!

They alluded to it much earlier in the movie.

[Jokerz79]

I think the film was mediocre but I did like it's marketing outside of Deadpool most innovative marketing the X-Men had loved the In the Footsteps of clip with George Takei narrating I grew up watching Leonard Nimoy's In Search Of.

[Tofali]

Mediocre is even too much praise for that pile of manure.

[AdamFTF]

They spent way too much time on Apoclaypse's recruiting drive. The only Horsemen who needed to be anyone recognizable were Magneto and Storm. The other two could have been just about anybody and we didn't need to see Apocalypse go get them. This series in general tends to suffer from a lack of character and storytelling economy. For example, Jubilee was seemingly only in the movie so they'd have a character whose presence would scream "It's the eighties!" (never mind that her character rose to prominence in the early '90s). They're trying to do that thing Larry Houston would do in the old Fox cartoon where the crowd scenes and stuff would be filled with cameos, but they're not necessarily pulling it off. They introduce a ton of characters and never bother to develop most of them and a number of them end up coming across as watered down versions of themselves.

[Scott Taylor]

The Wolverine stuff was unneeded.

Mystique does NOT need to be a hero, much less the one that everybody else looks up to, much even LESS one who tries to hide who she is.

Apocalypse was a poorly defined villain in both powers and motive. He was also poorly design visually.

We got to see Magneto learn to hate humans AGAIN and struggle with whether he was a bad guy or not AGAIN.

Angel, Psylocke, and Storm... were horsemen... for some reason. They really didn't have personalities.

What kid of X-men team has Jubilee as a member before they have Cyclops?

The movie never really established who it's "hero" was. For a while it seemed like it was going to be Cyclops as he came to the school, joined the team, and adjusted to how things where, but that went nowhere. He also never really felt like Cyclops to me. He was too much of a cool rebel.

Phoenix outta nowhere!

Sums it up in more detail than I could manage, because I have blanked out more of the movie.

Still waiting for an actual heroic and compelling version of Cyclops to appear. Its kind of sad that Mystique and Beast are more fleshed out and heroic after all these films. This is a huge part of why I think Dark Phoenix is going to be difficult to swallow. The whole comic story, all of it, relies on well over 100 comic book issues of development for Scott and Jean's relationship. You can't just have a watery tart fling a Phoenix power at someone and expect it to be a good movie.

[Arfguy]

I think the villain was handled OK in the movie, but he is such a big archnemesis of X-Men which require far much more setup than just one post credit scene showing his young age. At least a trilogy is needed to set him up.

Also I really wish to see Mr Sinister.

To me, it felt like a trash movie. The creators had no idea what Apocalypse was and what Apocalypse could be. They cast a pretty charismatic actor to play Apocalypse like a boring and try-hard nemesis. Nothing Apocalypse did made any sense. All the actors were given nothing to do and Bryan Singer got lucky with DoFP and used up all that good grace to make a really boring movie.

So all-in-all, it just felt like they should have quit after DoFP and just counted the days until Marvel Studios got a hold of the X-Men. I wish it didn't take the outright purchase of a movie studio for the rightful owners of the X-Men franchise to get them back under deserving care, but sometimes business needs to be taken care of.

Marvel Studios will finally start making great X-Men movies instead of good movies starring 4-6 good X-Men.

[Michael Watkins]

if you take all of the non-Magneto-centric stuff out of First Class, Future Past, and Apocalypse, it's actually a really strong story.

[Killerbee911]

What went wrong with X-men apocalypse

1. They had no clue what they wanted Apocalypse to be as a villain, They had no clue what they want the movie to be a Disaster movie or Superhero movie had they pick either one they would have gotten a better movie

2. They didn't let Jennifer Lawrence go and she was clearly done with the franchise, In fact, they should have probably let Fassbender go as well and not because he was bad but only reason Magneto and Mystique are getting attention this point is that they are the big name actors and that change the story focus away from X-men lore to showcase those actors. Bending to please Jlau hurt this movie storywise.

3. You don't put Storm, Psylocke, and Angel in X-men movie to be the bad guys, making Horsemen recognizable X-men doesn't help if moviegoers and fans aren't invested in them. Magento arc should have been Angel arc in the movie. Angel gets hurt with the X-men and leaves , Apocalypse comes to him gives him back his wings. In the final battle Archangel breaking free from Apocalypse control is the big moment.

4. The focus of the movie should have been Jean Grey, Cyclops, Storm, Psylocke and Nightcrawler, not Xavier, Magento, Mystique, Quicksilver, Havok and Beast. Jean and Cyclops get better focus but old guard keep them from truly shining as the main focus.

5. Apocalypse looks stupid, In a world where Thanos does not look horrible, there is no reason for Apocalypse to look that bad.

6. They failed to build a good Cyclops and Jean romance

7. Mystique being the hero of heroes in the X-men universe hurts to see

The less familiar you are with X-men mythos the better the movie is for you, I don't have problems with anyone liking X-men Apocalypse it is solid action/superhero movie and has three of better action set pieces in a X-man movie The attempt to kill apocalypse in the beginning, The Quicksilver saves the people in mansion,The final battle against apocalypse were all very entertaining. So if you don't know the lore(or don't care) combine with good action I can see people liking it. But X-man comic snob in me watches X-men First Class and X-men Apocalypse(and parts of DoFP) get very annoyed these movies don't do the X-men story justice which means they really don't do the X-men justice.

[Arsenal]

My main issue with X-Men:Apocalypse was that it failed to make me care about any of the new characters while leaving me tired of the established ones. That’s not to say the actors not the characters they portrayed are bad, just that I lost interest in going through the same beats with a new paint job.

If I don’t care about the cast the story is built on, everything else falls apart because I don’t care about what’s shown on screen.

[Batman Begins 2005]

Worst of the X-Men First Class films and one of the worst X-Men films.
Oscar Issac deserved better.
Back to the Magneto well again.
Mystique sucks.

[Sam Robards, Comic Fan]

Honestly, I love Apocalypse. It's one of my favorites in the franchise; however, it's not perfect. If I were to change things, I would (in no particular order):

• Better define Apocalypse's motivations and power set. He does a lot of stuff, power-wise, including healing, teleportation, force fields, power amplification, information absorption, molecule/sand manipulation, some mind control abilities and at least some minor telepathic ability. I'm not saying anything has to be stripped out, but at least nail it down so we aren't wondering why he can now do X in this scene. I'm perfectly ok with his "survival of the fittest" mantra, but have him tell us that more explicitly, which shouldn't be a problem since Apocalypse loves to provide boisterous monologues (and gives a couple good ones in the movie as-is). Also, dig deeper into the feelings of betrayal that were only intimated at in the movie. He's genuinely shocked when Magneto turns on him at the end of the film, which seems to imply a sense of vulnerability there. It's just a smidge, but it's there. Work with that.
• Remove the Magneto family subplot and just have Apocalypse recruit Mags from some hole-in-the-wall base or something where he's hanging out. As well performed as the family scenes were, we didn't really need to give Mags more/the same reason to hate humanity
• Give the time previously devoted to Mag's family to Apocalypse recruiting the other Horsemen, allowing us a better idea of what they're about and why they would join up: is he tricking them (like with Storm), controlling them (as maybe with Archangel?) or is he just appealing to their desire for power (as with Psylocke)?
• Kill Mystique at the end of the movie. That's nothing against Lawrence or her performance: I even like her arc in this movie, but it should've ended with Apocalypse killing her. That could be the catalyst for Scott to take charge of the rest of the team and step into a leadership role
• Speaking of Scott, give the kids more to do. I know they liberated the team via Wolverine at Alkali Lake, but I'd have at least left the mall scene back in to give us an idea of who these kids are outside of class, so to speak
• While I enjoy it overall, you don't need the Stryker/Alkali Lake sequence. Have the X-Men go to a secondary X-facility or something after the mansion's destroyed and have the young X-Men do some training exercises (hinting at Scott's predisposition for leadership) until Xavier reaches out with Apocalypse's telepathic edict. Since people have such hard-ons for costumes, they could get those end-of-movie costumes here for use in the final battle
• OR, if you wanna keep Alkali Lake in, have it be revealed that Mystique (posing as Stryker as the end of DoFP) was found out between movies and captured, giving up Wolverine to Weapon X to save her own butt. The guilt involved there would be a catalyst for why she's going around saving mutants from various perils at the beginning of this movie

That sounds like a lot, but not having those changes doesn't mean I don't love the movie as it is. Some things I enjoyed include:

• The Phoenix reveal at the end. No one will ever tell me Jean walking onto thin air and exploding into a fiery tempest isn't amazing to see
• Mystique's arc. You can argue whether or not she "should" be there if you want, but she was, and her arc works really well. She set out to murder a man at the end of DoFP, but people call her a hero because she shot Magneto and stopped an attack on the White House. She knows she's not worthy of the praise and adoration being heaped upon her, which is why she hides her blue form until the final battle, when she accepts said mantle
• Apocalypse teaching Magneto how to fully express his powers (he doesn't amplify them like he did with the other Horsemen, as Apocalypse's eyes never go white like in the other sequences) and the subsequent destruction of Auschwitz was a fantastic scene
• I like Apocalypse and the Horsemen's costume designs and the X-Men costumes at the very end of the movie. Just wish the latter could've been used outside that one scene

I could go on, but I'll leave it at that.

Regarding what specifically caused the poor performance, I certainly know that three weeks+ of negative reviews (there was no review embargo) certainly didn't help matters, and I still, to this day, don't understand all the negativity thrown at this movie. Opinions are opinions, of course, and my opinion of this one is still very high.

[Midvillian1322]

^^^ How did you feel about the whole Wolverine and Jean telepathically imprinting on each other scene?

[Killerbee911]

I still, to this day, don't understand all the negativity thrown at this movie. Opinions are opinions, of course, and my opinion of this one is still very high.

Even without X-men fanboy complaints It is not a good movie. The story isn't good, The flow of the plot/movie wasn't good, The acting wasn't particularly strong with JLau performance being particular bad you literally felt the disinterest in the part( Fassbender was good though,Oscar Isaac was solid in spite of what he was given to work with) .Beyond good action and solid special effects,and just in general beautiful shot movie there isn't much to praise.

To make matters worse this X-men movie comes after possible the best team X-men movie(Days of Future past) and one of the best solo movies in Deadpool.Plus pretty shortly Logan was release too. Fox is at their creative peak with X-men franchise and they put out X-men Apocalypse. It is weird when people try to defend X-men apocalypse It is sandwich between DoFP, Deadpool and Logan. You just have to compare it those movies to get understanding why so much negative is thrown at it. What does Apocalypse feel more like X3 or Days of Future past?

[Sam Robards, Comic Fan]

^^^ How did you feel about the whole Wolverine and Jean telepathically imprinting on each other scene?

I got more of a Heather Hudson vibe from the scene (in that she helped him find a piece of his humanity that Weapon X had stripped away) rather than the romantic leanings that others have taken from it. I will, however, admit that I can see where those people are coming from. I just didn't view it that way, even on my initial viewing.

It didn't lead to anything (since Wolverine ain't comin' back), so I don't really have a problem with it.

[Gaastra]

Apocalypse was a generic bad guy that could be replaced with anyone. Rename him happy the super clown and it does not change the plot.

Magneto turning bad AGAIN. Even with the trailer I rolled my eyes and was sick of that.

Quicksilver making a big deal about talking to his dad and then never tells him he is his son. Something that could have made magneto change sides. Even how it should have ended attacked the film for that!

Last film set up logan going to teach at the school complete with Mystique finding him was thrown out this movie. Why even set that up?

Telling fans they will make up to Jubilee fans after she had her big scenes cut out of two films only to cut her big scenes out of this one! (that was attacked when the film first came out plus the mall scenes were great and should have stayed in.)

Crappy cg last half hour with dirt flying everywhere.


The "sweet dreams" scene was the best part of the movie. Rest was blah to me. Plus it came right after the much better dofp.