Our friends Tina and Damian agreed to watch Walker Dennis on the 11th and we were able to watch X-Men Apocalypse, as an early Father’s Day present.

Overall, I really enjoyed the film.  Much better than I was lead to believe it was.  I really don’t have any problems with it, lots of surprises.  Which I really need to learn a lesson with this, and not follow films too closely.

Onto the major spoilers –

The film opens in 3600 BCE, which I didn’t even know we were adding the E to it, it stands for Era, which doesn’t seem that crucial of a change.  I see some traitors of Apocalypse that try to halt the body transfer that Apocalypse has to do to gain additional powers.  I like how his ship is clearly Celestial powered but the film doesn’t go into the alien technology aspect of Apocalypse’s origins.  That’s probably for the best, as we’re not going to go into the Celestials in the next film – or any of these films.  This also explains why Apocalypse hasn’t been around before the “present day” main portion of the film, he’s been sleeping this entire time.  We see his Horsemen in action.

We jump to the present, which is 1983, in Ohio.  The first new character is Scott Summers, a welcome addition to the films!  He’s portrayed by Tye Sheridan who I just saw in the Standford Prison Project – which has a lot of known faces in the cast.  Once he has the glasses on, he sort of reminded me of Miles Teller.  Maybe all white twenty year olds look the same with that chin?  I tried to find an image of the two together but it doesn’t exist, hmmmm.

Scott gets his powers activated in the boys room and totally takes out a dumb jock, which is awesome.  His high school teacher is explaining how it is the tenth anniversary of Magneto’s attack on the White House, seen in Days of Future Past.  They really emphasis that passage of time in this film.

Berlin.  Angel played by Ben Hardy – who I don’t know but apparently he was on EastEnders for a while.  I know the old BBC show, by reputation only.  He’s in proper Angel form, and has recently taken out Blob, in a cage fight.  This is his tenth victory, in a role.  This scene makes me start thinking about how this new timeline and so now I’m thinking of how Wolverine Origins still fits into this new continuity.  I imagine that some details may be tweaked but that film should remain the same – so I’m just looking for aspects that could be changed.  Blob’s inclusion here, I feel like it doesn’t change anything of Wolverine Origins.  I do like how Blob was wearing his black unitard with yellow belt.

Angel is sort of bad arse.  We see Mystique, looking like a white Jennifer Lawrence, is snooping around the arena.  Angel’s next opponent is Kurt Wagner, Nightcrawler – played by Kodi Smit-McPhee who I also haven’t seen before.  I really enjoy Kurt and he definitely didn’t disappoint in this film.  I wished we got more than just the one scene (well two I suppose) of just Mystique and Kurt together but they didn’t want to play up that angle and I can’t blame them for that.  Kurt hurts Angel’s wing, and Mystique is able to crash the arena’s power systems so everyone flees.

Kurt is brought in a box that dampens his power, a motif that we see a couple times throughout the film.  Which makes total sense, as ten years later, yeah, people are going to have created security measures to protect themselves against rogue mutants and mutants named Rogue.

Poland, once again, Michael Fassbender’s Magneto steals the film for me.  I’m still all for a Magneto solo film, I could watch two hours of Magneto straight killing humans (or whatever he wishes to do) as he is Magneto for me.

I’m not a big fan of Assassin Creed, I played parts of the first two games – i did like the second one more than the first but with Fassbender as the star of the film, I’m all for watching it now.  Though I don’t know how they will turn an 80 hour game into a two hour film.  That one looked good and the Mark Wahlberg’s Deepwater Horizon.  It was nice to see Kurt Russell in a film again (I know he’ll be in Guardians of the Galaxy 2) was Interstate 60 his last film?  Probably the last one I’ve seen him in.  Such a great movie.  I’m not that familiar with the events of Deepwater Horizon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_explosion

Oh, this is the event that lead to the BP Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico, I hadn’t thought about the origins of the event itself, back in 2010.

Magneto is going by the name of Henryk Gorzky.  A name that I don’t believe has any significance to Magneto of the comics.  A quick Google search lead me to Henryk Gorski, the Polish sport shooter in both the 1960 & 1964 Summer Olympics.  There was also, in 2009, another Henryk Gorski (52) strangled a 24 year old woman.  “Gorzky” didn’t have any results besides related to this film.

Erik has a wife, who I kept listening to hear her get name checked but she never does.  It wasn’t until the credits that listed her as Magda that I got the confirmation, which is great that they got the name right from the comics.  I’m not sure why they took the time to get Magda right but didn’t name the daughter Anya instead going with Nina.  Why go half way with the research?

Havok, with totally 80s hair, has taken Scott to Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters.  Scott meets Beast, who is also in his white Nicholas Hoult form.  He meets Jean Grey, portrayed by Sophia Tuner.  I really need to watch Game of Thrones as I’m missing so much.  Plus, I need to know more about Daenerys Targaryen.  I do like seeing these three Original Five members of the X-Men being together.  I start watching the backgrounds, like a hawk, looking for any boy throwing an iceball or a girl walking through a wall – but I had no luck.  I’m sure I saw a young brunette with a giant patch of white hair on her head, so that could be Rogue.  Maybe Singer’s way of throwing a character a bone for skipping her in the theatrical cut of Days of Future Past.

Scott meets Xavier, who wants Scott to test out his eye blasts.  I guess Havok hadn’t seen Scott’s powers either, as no one thinks to just have Scott blast into the sky.  Instead, he blasts a tree that Xavier’s grandfather planted and he use to swing on – it was his favorite tree.  The other students are weary of Scott now.  This is also the first light moment of the film, which the film does a better job of peppering with as this film didn’t seem as dark and dreary as the others.

Mystique brings Kurt to a mutant underground railroad of sorts.  There we meet Caliban –

played by Tomas Lemarquis, who looks like he was taken straight from the comic!  I still need to watch Chris Evan’s Snowpiercer one of these days.

In Egypt, the beautiful Rose Byrne returns from First Class, as Moira MacTaggert.  She’s following a mutant cult who worship Apocalypse.  Unfortunately, if it wasn’t for her actions, the entire film wouldn’t have happen.  She follows the cult members under a rug that leads underground but she didn’t recover the entrance with the rug so sunlight hits the underground pyramid that wakes up Apocalypse.  This is the first callback to First Class, one of the two X-films that Bryan Singer didn’t direct.  I didn’t quite miss her in Days of Future Past but she is a welcome return.  Apocalypse waking up causes an earthquake.  Back at the factory in Poland, Magneto saves a co-worker from being smashed by a molten bucket – this will backfire on him.  Poor Magneto, from mutant leader to common factory worker – sort of like what Wolverine did for years during Wolverine Origins.

Xavier’s School.  The students are scared as Jean is having one of her nightmares.  Xavier comes to her bedside, as Beast stands at the door.  Xavier sneaks into her dream and witnesses the possible destruction of the world.  Jean wakes up and to sooth her, he leaves his wheelchair and gets into her bed.  Which seems highly inappropriate but Beast is at the door so nothing is going to happen but it is still an odd choice.

Which reminds me, during the trailer, I had thought Sophie Turner wasn’t all that attractive in this scene (for those short seconds) but she is attractive and I wanted to correct the record.

Cairo, Egypt.  Storm, played by Alexandra Shipp – who I also don’t know.  Did this happen at anyone else’s theater?  Before the film started, after the trailers, Alexandra Shipp had a message of thanks and kept emphasizing that the film employed over 1500 folks and it was a pleasure to work on and everyone is excited for us to see the final product.  Or did only Cinemarks get this message?  It felt like an odd choice.  Like, get Singer to do the message or someone bigger or smaller from the cast.  Like, I don’t know, like it put her in a lower tier or something.  Maybe I’m overthinking it.

We see Storm using her powers to steal some food.  Before we see her do it, we see Apocalypse wearing a cloak and walking about the city.  I was hoping we’ll get a twist of Storm pick pocketing Xavier, but this time, with Apocalypse but that didn’t happen.  In an alley, Apocalypse saves Storm from the shop keepers she stole from.  I make a big deal about movie Captain America waking up 60 years later but imagine waking up 3800 years later?  I’m not even sure how the brain rations anything it sees.

Poland.  Magneto is telling Magda that they need to leave.  After some convincing, Magda agrees but Nina is missing.  They search for her and come across her surrounded by police officers.  They know who they are talking to, as they brought wooden bats and one dude brought a bow and arrows.  That guy, I couldn’t believe someone thought an archer was the way to go.

The officers let go of Nina as she runs into her mother’s arms as Magneto has agreed to go with the officers.  Nina starts freaking out and this causes birds to swoop down and start harassing the officers so she has some sort of mutant power over animals.  Apparently, on the ride home, when we first see Nina – my wife pointed out to me – that Nina was feeding a deer and wild rabbits so she knew from the get go.  The archery fuck gets distracted and lets loose an arrow.

The entire time, once we saw the officers, my mind was racing on how Magneto’s family was going to die.  It didn’t make sense it would be by baseball bat, as he should be able to stop one of them from being killed.  But when that arrow was fired and it goes through both mother and daughter, my heart just stopped.  Being a husband and father, these scenes hit me harder than in my single days.  Magneto has had nine years of being a father and husband and he loves his family so much.  As he should!  To have them both die, in that same moment, is heartbreaking.  I would have been fine, super fine, if the movie just stop and we got thirty minutes of Magneto killing the police officers and leaving that one archer to just straight torture for the remainder twenty-five minutes.  Instead, he kills them in seconds, including the archer, with Nina’s necklace that has the last remaining pictures of Magneto’s parents.  It is intense!  I swear, the scene probably lasts like five minutes at most but it felt like forever as my brain processed it from expectations to results and what-could-have-beens.

Hank tells Xavier about the earthquake and Hank’s computers are going crazy.  We see the Cerebro from the original X-Men trilogy.  Xavier checks in on Moira, who he still secretly loves.  He’s checked on her a few times and can barely talk about her, which is pretty funny.  Xavier and Havok, as we need to get as much screen time of Havok and that hair, as possible.

Lucas Till should have told the hair dressers to go less 80s with it.

Xavier reminds Havok how, in a total dick move – very much like Superman in Superman 2, Xavier erased Moira’s memory.  In an awesome and silly exchange, Xavier gets Moira to reveal she has a son – who is totally Kevin and that is frightening! and an ex-husband.  Havok enjoys this exchange, as do I, so much.  Moira is a good sport during it, she doesn’t know why Xavier knows so much about her or why he seems so familiar to her.  Though she has read all of his papers he has written.

Moira essentially gives us the scene that was in all of the trailers, the background exposition of who Apocalypse is.

Egypt.  Storm takes Apocalypse back to her place.  He discovers television and is able to touch the screen and absorb all information of the missing years.  I like the way Apocalypse, who is played by Oscar Isaac who played Poe Dameron in Star Wars : Force Awakens.

Who I glossed over in the very beginning of the film and he’s the flipping star of the film.

I’m glad they were able to make Apocalypse appear more blue as he looked way more purple in photos prior to the film’s release –

made him look like Ivan Ooze from the first Power Rangers film.

Apparently I’ve seen Oscar Isaac in a few things.  He was Joseph in The Nativity Story and he was Little John in Russel Crowe’s Robin Hood film.

One of the news reports mentions how America and Russia is a super power and we get a fun moment when Apocalypse uses the term “super power” which I feel like is hardly used in these comic movies.  It sounded unique.

Apocalypse makes Storm his first Horseman, it is a shame that each one isn’t given a proper title.  By turning her into a Horseman (woman?) he turns her hair white.  This won’t be the only hair change Apocalypse is responsible for.   At some point, Storm talks about her hero worship of Mystique.  Mystique is a hero of many young mutants.  Mystique disagrees that she’s a hero, it is why she is rarely in her blue form.

Hank has made a special pair of sunglasses made of ruby quartz for Scott to hold back his powers.  I wished we could have gotten a montage of different materials, or just have Hank with three pairs of glasses, with different materials.  Instead, Hank got it right on the first go.

Scott still has to lift the glasses to let loose his optic blasts and it wasn’t until the final fight when I realized that he typically has a visor – I got pretty swept up in the film and didn’t really watch the film with my arms crossed looking for faults.

Mystique brings Kurt to the Xavier Institute.  Kurt makes fast friends of Scott, Jean and Jubilee.  I really thought Lana Condor, as Jubilee, was going to get more screen time.  It wasn’t until I was looking things up for this post that I remembered that Jubilee was suppose to get an entire moment in an arcade in a mall but we never get it.  Bryan Singer said that there will be no Director’s Cut of this film but there will be delete scenes.

Jubilee, Kurt, Scott and Jean go the mall.  They watch Return of the Jedi, which is fun – especially for FOX to allow them to make a Star Wars reference, when they no longer own the rights.  I think Jubilee is the one (if not her, it is Jean) who says third films are the worst of the trilogy.  Which I thought was producer and screenwriter, Simon Kinberg’s way of insult X3.  Then I realized this film is the third of the new trilogy and I thought it was pretty good.  Hard to believe this is the ninth film in the X-Men franchise.  That’s pretty impressive.

Xavier and Mystique get a fun moment to catch up.  I first saw this scene during Graham Norton Show, Season 19 episode 8 –

Thanks to DailyMotion user, El Weston for hosting this episode.  I originally saw it on YouTube but that video appears to no longer exist.

Jennifer Lawrence looks stunning in that dress, some great stories are told in that episode.  Then Johnny Depp and Will.i.am appear and you can stop the episode before all of that happens.  Jack Whitehall is pretty funny, I should watch his proper comedy special, if he ever gets one.

Mystique tells Xavier about Magneto’s family dying and the look on Xavier’s face, like he knows the entire world is going to be ripped to shreds.  Magneto, or his power over magnetism, truly is one of those all powerful powers.

Back at Caliban’s shop.  After hours, Apocalypse & Storm arrive, looking for powerful mutants.  Caliban tries to get them to leave but quickly learns he is out of his league with Apocalypse.  As a comic Horseman, it was great that we got a scene with Apocalypse and Caliban.  Caliban is protected by Psylocke.

Olivia Munn is Psylocke, she doesn’t get a lot to do but is seen a whole bunch in this film.  If she made a reference to her brother, Brian, I missed it as she doesn’t talk much once this scene is over.  Though she is great in the role.  We also do not get her saying “focus totality” which is a real shame.  She has both a real sword and her physic sword.  Later, she uses a physic whip, which I didn’t care for but it is her powers, she can do with them as she wanted.

Psylocke becomes Apocalypse’s second Horseman and she knows where to go for a third one.  Which will be Angel and I wish we got more moments with Angel and Psylocke, as the two dated in the comics.  Angel has a busted wing, due to Kurt’s fight earlier.  I do like how they said an angel needs to fight a demon, in that earlier scene.  Reminded me of Ultimate X-Men.

Apocalypse takes pity on Angel and gives him a massive power upgrade –

I do wish Apocalypse called him “his Archangel” but he didn’t but Angel does look great with the metal wings.

Quicksilver, who tries to steal the movie again but is usually the best part of the scenes he is in.  He’s watching the news that Magneto is clearly back and murdering fools.  His mother comes into the room and he goes back to playing Ms. Pac-Man – who he mistaking just says “Pac-Man” but he’s in fact playing the much superior game.  On another television screen, we see and hear the Knight Rider theme song – which is awesome!

Magneto shows back up to the factory, he gives a pretty great speech.  One of these fuckers told the police that the all powerful Magneto was living in their sleepy Polish city.  Which lead to the death of his wife and daughter, so  now all of these fools have to die.  If I worked at the same factory as Magneto, I would just be cool and the next day, I would have brought him in a cake or something.  Magneto is about to kill these fools when Apocalypse and his Horsemen arrive.  Apocalypse kills the factory workers and offers to make Magneto even more powerful.  They all teleport away.

Apocalypse teleported them to Auschwitz, which I already know is a brilliant move on Apocalypse’s part but he could be just igniting Magneto’s rage in an uncontrollable way.  We get flashbacks to both First Class and the first X-Men film, to Magneto’s origins.  Which wouldn’t be affected by the timeline change so that’s a smart move.  We get several clips from the previous films which I’m not sure is a holdover from Days of Future Past but I enjoyed them.

Once Magneto has been properly motivated, he destroys all of the remaining buildings, so the world knows that Magneto is on the warpath.

Back at Cerebro.  Xavier, Mystique, Hank, Alex and Moira are about to look for Magneto.  Xavier had to tell Mystique, earlier, that he midnwiped Moira’s mind as Mystique wasn’t there for that scene as she had joined Magneto.

Xavier finds Magneto and they have a telepathic conversation.  I like how Apocalypse is just cool that Magneto walked away (but not out of the room) to mutter to himself.  I’m really not sure what those four were doing during Magneto’s conversation, as they seem to just be walking around.

Xavier is a good friend, having so much sympathetic for Magneto’s lost.  He doesn’t try to belittle Magneto’s motivations.

Eventually Apocalypse walks over and uses his connection to Magneto to connect to Xavier.  From here, the movie really kicks into gear.  Apocalypse uses Xavier’s connection to Cerebro to reach into the minds of everyone on the world.  He has soldiers and seamen fire all of the nuclear warheads into space.  So there goes the main offense the world was going to have on Apocalypse.

Xavier is glued to Cerebro so Hank has to start trashing the place.  As the heroes start to leave the chamber, Apocalypse and crew arrive.  Magneto takes a knocked out Xavier with them.  Alex, trying to help, blasts at Apocalypse but they teleport away.  So Havok’s blast hits the fancy new Blackbird and it explodes!

Quicksilver arrives, and notices the explosion starting.  We get treated to what would be a minute’s worth of explosion, experienced over six minutes as he is rescuing the main cast and the students in a super fun sequence.  Once everyone is out, we get treated to our first . . . Xavier Mansion Explosion!

It is intense to actually see the whole thing go down as it happens so often in the comics, that I got use to it.

http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2013/11/03/drawing-crazy-patterns-the-x-mansion-is-destroyed/

Brian Cronin, over at Comics Should Be Good, has a great list of when the comics mansion exploded.

It is during the rescuing part, that we see the girl with the white patch of hair but I can’t find that image anywhere.

Scott, Jean, Kurt & Jubilee come riding back and Quicksilver believes he saved everyone.  Hank asks about Alex, who Quicksilver doesn’t know, as it turns out, Havok was the closest to the explosion, so Quicksilver didn’t see him.  Scott doesn’t take the lost of his older brother well but it is okay, as we have the much better Summers brother in the film.

It is this at this time that my bladder starts telling me that I have to pee.  Which I always do before the movie starts and that usually works for me but not this time.  I worked at Hastings that morning and I had a very tight window from leaving there, to go home and pick up my wife and son so we can get him to Tina’s.  This caused a slight issue where, in my rush to get out of the store – I apparently annoyed an older man wanting into the lock video cabinet, as he had waiting twenty minutes before I got around there.  Which I know that couldn’t be true but I tried to be playful and that upset him greatly but I got him his Blurays and he wanted to talk to my supervisor but I didn’t have time to defend myself but I’m sure I’ll hear about that at some point.  Has this happened to other Hastings were sales are low and staff has been scaled way back?  This keeps happening where I either get a Friday night shift or a Saturday morning shift.  So there was suppose to be someone else on the floor but he was covering cafe and the other person hadn’t arrived for 2pm so that’s what happened there.  I probably could have handled it differently but I had to go home.

I knew a certain scene was coming up so I had to hold out until that scene had happened, a scene or a moment.

Once Scott has had his moment, Colonel Stryker arrives and knocks all the mutants out.  For some reason – Kurt, Scott & Jean are not knocked out.  The soldiers pick up Mystique, Beast, Moira and Quicksilver.  They are thrown on a helicopter and the mutant teens with altitude jump on the helicopter too.  By the time the chopter is about to take off, Stryker flips a switch that dampens their mutant powers.  If only Kurt teleported onto the chopter and immediately teleported them off, the rest of the film would have played out differently.  Instead, some acting had to happen and everyone is now captive.

If you wanted the interview above, Jennifer Lawrence reveals that they were able to scale the makeup process way back.  So now she is essentially wearing pantyhoes on her legs and arms.  Which is unfortunately as whenever she is in knocked out, and in her natural blue form, you can see her white skin through the slits in the pantyhoes.  Sort of takes me out of the film but I can see production trying to stay on Jennifer Lawrence’s good side.  Mystique and Beast are both in their blue forms, now that they are taken captive.

Styrker has taken the mutants to Alkali Lake, a great connection to X2.  Quicksilver wakes up and freaks out now that Beast is blue and Mystique is blue.  He’s worried that he’s going to turn blue too – so funny!  Plus, Kurt is blue so that’s a lot of blueness going around.  The three teens, meanwhile, are running around the base, trying to go unnoticed by the troops – which doesn’t work.

Meanwhile, Apocalypse and the Horsemen have Xavier, back in Egypt.  Apocalypse forces Xavier to send a message to everyone in the world – the dark days are coming.  At some point, Apocalypse mentions how the world needs to be cleansed and it totally reminded me of Ra’s al Ghul’s speech about how the League of Assassins have been cleansing the world, for generations.  Xavier, somehow sends Jean a side telepathic message – I’m not sure how that works.  Apocalypse wants Xavier to finish the speech by stating “the strongest will survive” but instead, Xavier ends it by saying the strong need to protect the weak – which isn’t the same at all. 

In the dampening cell, that still gets Xavier’s message – so I’m not sure how that works too.  Quicksilver mentions to Mystique how Magneto is his father – no mention of the younger sister from the first film.  Mystique is confused by the information and Quicksilver tries to explain to her where babies are made but she understood that part of his story.

Then we got to the actual scene that steals the film.  Like Spider-Man in Captain America : Civil War, I knew this was coming but I also thought this was only going to be a minute but it was a full on scene.  An awesome scene!

Jean senses a mutant, who is more machine than man –

Thanks to Tumblr user, hughjackmania for the above image.

The head gear is a pretty good attempt at the comic Weapon X by Barry Windsor-Smith –

but with the understanding that once Jackman agreed to be in the film, FOX wasn’t going to allow his face to be covered by a silly helmet.

The scene is awesome, as he slays into soldiers as he tries to escape.  It really did remind me of the Wolverine Origins video game (that I still enjoyed) with him just mowing down fools.  I was reminded of my own thought – of why did the soldiers keep coming at him?  I would have just stopped and walked away.  The teens keep following behind him.

This, of course, did not happened during Wolverine Origins, and I’m okay with this change (especially as I have to be) but it still lines up in my mind.  Jean gives him back a few memories and he runs away in the snow, not naked.  So Wolverine Origins can still happened.  Except that Scott isn’t going to be a prisoner for Wolverine to be free about that is another slight change.  That film can still work,  maybe not with “Deadpool” at the end but another Weapon XI stand in.  Also, that Patrick Stewart’s Xavier wouldn’t be at the end of that film, but James McAvoy’s but that works too, due to what Apocalypse does to Xavier.

Wolverine, has a crazy amount of hair on the back of his head, as the last we’ll see of him.  My wife says it is due to being in that chamber for so long but I say it is due to being filming a movie that requires him to have long hair.

So once Weapon X is gone, I head to the bathroom so I missed like three minutes of the film.

I come back and the mutants are on a new plane.  My wife said it was a Russian plane but I’m sure it must be Canadian as they were at Alkali Lake.  So I’m not sure.  I did see that Beast sees the flight suits and the X-Men get sweet suits!

I had forgotten that Moira got a suit even, as she stays in the plane during the final battle.  The suits seem very flattering on the ladies

Egypt.  We start the climax of the film.  Apocalypse tells Magneto to start stripping the world of metal.  He takes Xavier to the transfer plates so that Apocalypse can take Xavier’s body and powers.

In classic X-Men fashion, they split up.  Beast, Scott, Jean and Kurt will go after Apocalypse.  Mystique and Quicksilver go after Magneto.

Magneto was given a sweet new outfit too!

Quicksilver decides to not to tell Magneto that he is Magneto’s son – though I’m sure that would have had Magneto stop destroying monuments.  The world is definitely going to be changed after this.

Storm and Cyclops fight, and it is awesome.  I wish we stuck with these two for a bit.  Psylocke seems to really beat Beast down and we are treated to Round Two of Kurt v Archangel.

Quicksilver tries to slow flight Apocalypse but he stops him in his tracks.  That slow fight does look pretty great through.  Psylocke is told to kill Quicksilver but it is really Mystique.  Apocalypse grabs Mystique by the throat, as Storm watches.

Apocalypse made a comment about how he is linked to Xavier.  Xavier knows this to be true and realizes that he has a connection to Apocalypse.  It is at this time when I realize that we haven’t seen the scene where Xavier loses a fight with a giant Apocalypse in the mansion.  Which we get the beginning of that fight.  I do like Apocalypse showing off one of his known powers – the ability to grow – I was hoping a giant A would show up on his belt but that didn’t happened.  Xavier puts up a decent fight but Apocalypse is clearly beating him.  Xavier reaches out to Jean but she is super slow to coming to the rescue.

On the outside, we get a classic Claremont care bear stare moment as Magneto turns on Apocalypse as does Storm – so powers are coming at him.  Cyclops starts blasting the dude, as well.  Jean finally decides to help and goes all out Phoenix Force – which looks pretty incredible.  I hope Singer gets his wish of properly adapting the Dark Phoenix Saga and having it be in space.  That would be simply uncanny!

Apocalypse is dead, which makes sense as you can’t have Apocalypse just sitting somewhere, planning a second attempt.  Psylocke walks away, silently.

For her thanks, Xavier gives Moira her memories back – which she is happy about but I hope she never drops that it was a dick move on his part.  A clear time jump happens as Magneto and Jean are almost done rebuilding the school.  Downstairs, Xavier tells Magneto that the world has already started rebuilding.  Quicksilver has decided to not tell Magneto about his origins.

During Magneto’s decision making process, before he turn on Apocalypse, we got full clips from First Class – which was fun.  I do like Xavier and Magneto together, they have great chemistry and moments together.  They repeat the whole “what will you do when someone comes to this school looking for trouble” that I feel like has been done in X-Men 1 & 2 and again in First Class.  Xavier has had to answer this question a few times to Magneto but I do love the answer every time.

Movie ends with Mystique giving a speech about how these peeps are the X-Men as we see they got sweet new official outfits –

I forgot to mention how during that Apocalypse fight, when he was going to take over Xavier’s body, it came at the price of Xavier’s hair!  So that’s how he became bald.

The outfits do look pretty nice, I’m glad Kurt got some red on his and Cyclops got his visor.  Mystique being in a white outfit is nice as well.

During the post credits scene, we see the janitors working on collecting the bullet shells fired from Weapon X’s escape.  Which is a great detail, I could go for a Damage Control series.  We see government officials open a cabinet and take some blood from Wolverine and put it in a briefcase.

 

A great way to tease both Mister Sinister and X23!  I know when asked who he would play in a comic book movie, Bryan Cranston said “Mister Sinister” which if FOX could get him to sign a contract, they would go out of their way to make that film.  It wouldn’t be great, unless it was a Mutant Massacre style film.  Which could really work as a film.

This was a pretty good movie, I think the altered timeline could still make the other films work – until told otherwise.

Jackman has made all nine films, a record for an actor in a comic book movie franchise!  I imagine Chris Evans is going to beat this record, with his brief appearance in Thor : Dark World, him or Robert Downey Jr. due to both Incredible Hulk and Spider-Man : Homecoming.

. . .

Thanks for these websites for keeping my memory of the film alive –

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Men:_Apocalypse

http://marvel-movies.wikia.com/wiki/X-Men:_Apocalypse

Here is hoping that the next X-Film, either New Mutants, Deadpool 2 or X-Men : Dark Phoenix Saga (which can’t be the next one) keeps the streak alive.