15 Most Controversial Movie Moments 2016

Comic book movies this year have run the full gamut of the film critic spectrum, from the nigh-on universal acclaimed heights of Captain America: Civil War to the universally panned lows of Suicide Squad. Somewhere in the middle was Bryan Singer’s X-Men: Apocalypse which pretty much got an equal share of rave reviews and not so complimentary critiques. One part of the latest X-Men instalment that most agreed was a tad tacky and unnecessary was a CGI-heavy scene in which conflicted mutant Magneto is tempted over to the dark side by supervillain Apocalypse and blows up Auschwitz.

This isn’t this first time Magneto’s Jewish heritage has been touched upon in the film series. In both X-Men and X-Men: First Class, his harrowing youth spent held captive at the infamous concentration camp is referenced but those scenes didn’t involve anything so gratuitous as faux destroying Auschwitz for the sake of a CGI spectacle. While superhero movies wouldn’t be superhero movies without scenes of mass destruction, using a very real site where one of history’s most tragic atrocities took place feels exploitative and crass.