X-Men: Apocalypse - 15 Questions Left By The Stupidest X-Movie Ever
Why make this?
X-Men has always toed a very fine line between grounded realism and zany humour. Pinnacle scenes, like the battle a Liberty Island in X-Men or Pyro's police attack in X-2 are great spectacle, yes, but also have a solid understanding of the innate silliness of it all. All of the movies tried to find space for Holocaust parallels and buddy comedy, and while it didn't always work, it's been a defining throughline - heck, the previous movie in the series, Days Of Future Past, ended with Michael Fassbender flying a football stadium over Washington D.C. while trying to kill the President.
But just because the franchise has never shied away from showing the full tonal breadth of its comic book source doesn't mean we should just accept how unrelentingly dumb X-Men: Apocalypse is/
The story is a hodge-podge of ideas that don't quite fit together and the script is so overwhelmed by characters that none of the sub-plots get developed ahead of their conclusion. And, within all that, there's an awful lot of plot illogicies and general confusion that make it the stupidest (if not worst) movie in the series. Nothing quite as bad as Batman V Superman, a movie where every single scene left you with a bevy of questions, but that's hardly praise, is it?
15. Why Did Apocalypse’s Pyramid Have An External Self-Destruct?
Apocalypse opens in Ancient Egypt, showing the villain transferring his consciousness into a new body (OSCAR ISAAC!). Some iffy CGI crane shots aside, there's a lot to like in this sequence: the old, decrepit En Sabah Nur looks great: I've always liked how Singer handles background mutants, giving them a power-showcase before offing them in a very flippant way: and overall its campy tone fits this pretty ridiculous story.
Unfortunately, it turns into big, silly action beat when a group of mutant haters collapse the temple to try and Apocalypse using some carefully placed rocks.
But hold on - why did Apocalypse build a pyramid that had an external self-destruct that could be operated by just a couple of random soldiers? Pyramids did have locks that worked similar to this, sure, but they only sealed the tombs. And don't for a second say they'd planted the rocks - I can just about buy the first mutant not realising he's about to be betrayed (it actually works as motivation for his later plan with Charles), but that he'd miss his enemies having a way to destroy his monument is ludicrous.