10 Most Spiteful Movie Easter Eggs Ever
8. Bryan Singer Calls X-Men: The Last Stand "The Worst" - X-Men: Apocalypse
Like every superhero movie these days, X-Men: Apocalypse is jammed full of sneaky references and Easter eggs for eagle-eyed fans to catch, but there's one in particular that's loaded with a ton of vitriol.
Half-way through the movie, Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) and several other mutants go to see Star Wars: Return of the Jedi at the cinema, only to emerge disappointed that it didn't quite live up to the brilliance of The Empire Strikes Back.
As they debate the film's merits, the scene ends with Jean knowingly quipping, "Well, at least we can all agree that the third one is always the worst."
If to the casual observer this might seem like a general joke about the tendency for movie threequels to disappoint, it's really a more pointed stab at the third X-Men movie, The Last Stand.
After shooting the first two X-Men movies, Apocalypse director Bryan Singer ended up stepping away from the third, which was ultimately helmed by Brett Ratner to a wildly indifferent response from fans and critics alike.
Given that Singer essentially used the film before Apocalypse, X-Men: Days of Future Past, to undo everything he didn't like about The Last Stand, he evidently still had a chip on his shoulder about what went down.
The tragic irony, of course, is that Apocalypse itself ended up being a colossal disappointment, and because it's the third of the X-Men prequel movies, the joke applies to itself also, resulting in a bit of a self-own.
Considering that both The Last Stand and Apocalypse were written by Simon Kinberg, there's something weirdly poetic about that.