X-Men: Apocalypse – 10 Questions Answered

This article contains X-Men: Apocalypse spoilers.

If X-Men movies prove anything, it’s that superhero genre can be just as complex and dense as superhero comics. If you’ve come out of X-Men: Apocalypse with questions about what you just saw, you’re by no means alone. But we’re hear to answer 10 questions you might have about X-Men: Apocalypse.

What happened between Mystique and Stryker? Didn’t Mystique take Logan at the end of DOFP?

Er, yeah. So at the end of X-Men: Days of Future Past, Mystique – impersonating Stryker – took Wolverine away. We’re not entirely sure what that implied, other than to maintain the timeline of Wolverine ending up with Weapon X, but clearly in the years that followed something went on. As soon as Mystique saw Stryker she freaked out, so let’s just chalk that up to being an untold story from the 10 years between Days of Future Past and Apocalypse.

What was Wolverine wearing at the Weapon X facility?

That was a nod to Barry Windsor-Smith’s famous story, which first told Wolverine’s origin at the hands of the Weapon X program. The helmet was designed to monitor, process, and regulate his sensory inputs so that they could brainwash him and turn him into a mindless killing machine under their control. Which, much as in this movie, they got about half-right…

Why did the mansion explode?

So, in a not entirely-clear scene, the mansion is blown up, killing Havok in the process. What we think happened was that Alex aimed his energy blast at Apocalypse as he teleported away, but fired just late enough to miss Apocalypse and shoot through the wall of the underground complex. In doing so, he hit the power source on Hank’s experimental plane, causing a massive explosion that took out the mansion and would’ve killed everyone in there had Quicksilver not arrived just in time to save them. Well, most of them.

Who’s the girl in yellow?

She doesn’t use her powers in the film, but that’s Jubilee. We refer you to the ’90s X-Men cartoon for your best explanation of who she is (essentially the most junior X-Man of the era) but in this movie she’s just sort of… there.

Who is Caliban?

In the comics, Caliban is one of the morlocks – a society of mutants who can’t pass as human and have decided to live underground in seclusion. Caliban’s power is to track other mutants, though he has low, childlike intelligence and isn’t much like the King Goth of the movie (though he does have the bulging eyeballs). As an interesting footnote, Caliban was once powered up by Apocalypse and turned into one of his horsemen, proving (if nothing else) that Apocalypse’s search for strong followers had probably hit a bit of a speedbump.

What did Apocalypse want?

In the comics, the character’s general motivating desire is pure, ruthless survival-of-the-fittest, with the belief that mutants are the fittest. In the movie, there’s a lot of that in there (at least early on) but he seems to be after little more than world domination by the end. Still, he clearly hates weapons because they make the weak seem artificially strong (hence launching the world’s nukes into space), so maybe his plan was to turn the world into some kind of apocalyptic (no pun intended) crucible for weeding out the weak.

What happened to Jean that let her defeat Apocalypse?

Although the film kind of gives you all you need to know at this point – those are Jean’s powers manifesting unleashed, giving her the ability to telekinetically disintegrate Apocalypse – it’s worth noting that fans of the comics will recognize that as the Phoenix firebird. Although the Phoenix story was (sort of) covered in X-Men: The Last Stand, they kind of cut large chunks of it off, not least the firebird effect itself. The Phoenix is a manifestation of Jean’s unrestrained telekinesis and generally not a great thing to have happen because it tends to send people who wield it crazy. Expect to see it return in future movies.

What’s going on at the end?

If you mean the post-credits stinger, there’s a separate article covering that. If you mean with the trainee X-Men, well, that’s the Danger Room. Or at least the first version of it. The Danger Room is the place where X-Men go to test out and learn how to use their powers, and it was last seen in X-Men: The Last Stand where it had a much more futuristic, holodeck-style approach.

Why does Apocalypse need four followers?

Ehhhhhh well, that’s just his brand. It’s possible he’s just a big fan of (low) square numbers, I guess?

Really, he doesn’t need four in the comics either. He usually recruits four then names them War, Famine, Death, and Pestilence, and if you look in the credits the original ones were named as such. The latter four don’t seem to fit into any specific roles, and for that matter they don’t seem like much use to him even in the short term. He certainly isn’t keen on keeping them around.

Why do Cyclops’ eyes set stuff on fire in this film?

Because someone made a terrible mistake and should be fired. Force blasts. Not lasers. Force.