Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers, it's Jan here.
X-Men Apocalypse's day of reckoning has finally arrived and I've been able to hunt down all
the (best) easter eggs and references from the latest X-Men movie.
Of course, there will be spoilers ahead, so if you want to avoid any spoilers, click here
for my spoiler-free review or come back after you've seen the movie.
And as promised, I'm giving away the first of two packs of official X-Men Apocalypse
merch on this video.
To enter the giveway you just need to subscribe and leave a comment or reply to a comment
about your favourite easter egg in the movie.
One of the movie's best moments is when Hugh Jackman's Wolverine emerges from his Weapon
X cell in full-on berserker mode.
The headgear and cables, belt and gadgets around his waist, and the spikes in his torso
are a reference to his original training gear from the Weapon X comics, written and illustrated
by Barry Windsor-Smith.
And the red light we see on his helmet is nod to the red visor on his virtual reality
helmet in the comics.
The location where this all takes place is Alkali Lake, which we saw in the first X-Men
trilogy and in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, although with the changed timeline since Days of Future
Past, the Wolverine Weapon X we see here is a new version.
And the moment where Jean Grey touches Wolverine's head, soothes him, and restores a part of
his memory is a nod to the relationship between Wolverine and Famke Janssen's Jean Grey in
the original X-Men trilogy, even if here it feels rather age-inappropriate.
It's also an interesting twist on The Last Stand where it was Logan who tried to soothe
Jean Grey from her dark Phoenix self.
And there are lots of hints that the Dark Phoenix saga will be revisited in the X-Men
movie universe, hopefully in a more satisfying way than it was previously.
When Jean wakes up from her nightmare, the talk between her and Charles about a dark
power inside her together with visions of flames is an indication of what's to come,
and her words that "I'm afraid someday I'm going to hurt someone" are also a nod to how
she killed Scott Summers in The Last Stand.
In the final showdown Jean learns to harness the powerful Phoenix energy when Charles pleads
with her to unleash it so they can defeat Apocalypse.
And the moment is completed with the image of a burning bird around Jean, with Apocalypse
proclaiming "All is revealed!"
Thanks to the popularity of Quicksilver's amazing frozen time sequence in Days of Future
Past, Evan Peters gets not just one, but two fantastic slow-mo scenes in X-Men: Apocalypse.
And the pizza dog that Quicksilver rescues is an easter egg from the comics where Hawkeye
recues a dog called Lucky aka Pizza Dog.
And when Quicksilver surfs out of the exploding X-Mansion on a table, it's a cool visual nod
to the Silver Surfer from the comics and of course the Fantastic Four 2007 sequel Rise
of the Silver Surfer.
There's also a wink to the X-Men-themed V Energy Drink ad that Evan Peters did when
Quicksilver stops to take a sip of the TAB soda can from a girl holding the drink during
the X-Mansion explosion.
By the way, after the hints from Days of Future Past, we also get an amusing confirmation
that Magneto is Quicksilver's father, as per the comics.
The Six Million Dollar Man T-shirt that Quicksilver wears is a wink to Apocalypse director Bryan
Singer's rumoured plans to make a big-screen version of the 70s TV show The Six Million
Dollar Man.
And Quicksilver's room has some cool pop culture references from the 80s such as a Ms Pac-Man
arcade game and the Knight Rider theme was playing on his TV during the scene in his
room.
Blob from X-Men Origins: Wolverine makes a brief appearance as the opponent Angel knocks
out before Nightcrawler is brought in to the mutant cage fight.
This scene is also a callback to our first introduction to Wolverine in the very first
X-Men movie when he's cage-fighting in a bar.
By the way, in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, it was heavily implied Blob was killed, but in
this movie's new timeline, Blob, although unconscious, seems to be alive.
There's a reference to Nightcrawler's comic book and X-Men 2 origins in the circus when
he's introduced at the cage fight.
The fact that it's Raven aka Mystique who rescues Nightcrawler in East Berlin is a shout-out
to their history in the comic books where Mystique is actually Nightcrawler's mother
and his father is Azazel.
When the cage fight announcer introduces Angel as the "Angel of Death", it not only foreshadows
his becoming Apocalypse's horseman "Death" in this film, but it's also a reference to
the same thing happening in the comics.
In the movie, like in the comics, Apocalypse also transforms Angel into Archangel pushing
him through a painful process of shedding his old feather wings and growing new metal
ones that can shoot metal feathers like knives.
By the way, the track playing during this scene is, appropriately enough, heavy metal
band Metallica's 'The Four Horsemen'.
The underground business that the mutant Caliban runs in the movie is a nod to the time he
spent in the comics with the underground mutant community the Morlocks.
In the comics, Caliban has the power to sense and track where other mutants are within a
certain distance and in the film his job is to track down mutants for the right price.
The comic book Caliban becomes Apocalypse's horseman "Pestilence", but in the movie, it's
his henchwoman Psylocke who takes on this role.
Psylocke has a rather limited role in X-Men: Apocalypse, but she does get a number of nods
to her comic book characteristics.
She gets a comic book faithful, albeit impractical, costume and a pair of pink telekinetic katanas
which she can slice through just about anything with including, as we see in this movie, a
car.
Magneto's story of trying to live with his family among ordinary people in Eastern Europe
is based on a similar storyline from the X-Men comics, where he lives with a Romani woman
called Magda.
In the comics, they have a daughter called Anya, rather than Nina, as she's called in
the movie.
Similar to the film, tragedy befalls Magneto when his daughter dies in a fire.
When police prevent Magneto from going in to save Anya, he lashes out and kills them
all, as he does in the movie.
Comic book Magneto also loses his wife Magda when she flees afraid of what he's become.
By the way, in the comics Magda later gives birth to Magneto's children Wanda and Pietro,
aka Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver.
In the movie, during his time in Poland, Magneto takes on the alias Henryk, which is a nod
to when he changed his name in the comics to Eric Lensherr, which is, of course, the
name he goes by in the X-Men movie universe.
Magneto's daughter Nina's ability to communicate telepathically with animals such as the deer
we see by the house or the birds she uses to attack the police is a reference to the
comic-book mutant Lin Li, aka Nature Girl, who has antlers on her head and who can bond
with and control animals.
At the end of the movie, Cyclops gets a new visor and an iconic costume complete with
shoulder straps similar to the Jim Lee design in the 1990s comics.
The argument the school jock has with Scott about having his eyes on his girl is a little
inside joke to the rivalry between James Marsden's Cyclops and Wolverine over Scott's girlfriend
Jean Grey in the original X-Men movie trilogy.
And the jacket Scott Summer's bully wears has the words Wedgewood Pirates on the back,
possibly a wink to the space pirate Corsair who's Scott's father in the comics, especially
as Scott says his bully looks old enough to be the father of their female classmate.
Storm's mohawk matches the hairstyle makeover she got in the 1983 comic Uncanny X-Men No.
173.
And her pickpocketing skills also have their origins in the comics, where an orphaned Storm
learned the art of stealing on the streets of Cairo, and even tried to pick Professor
X's pocket.
Mystique also gets a new sleeveless white costume by the end of the movie, in reference
to her classic white outfits from the comics.
At the end of the movie, Mystique is clearly training the new team in Professor X's Danger
Room.
There's a tease of the classic X-Men robot foes the Sentinels as they march into the
Danger Room for training.
We last saw the Sentinels in Days of Future Past, but the X-Men also previously trained
against a simulated Sentinel at the beginning of X-Men: The Last Stand.
Although it feels like Jubilee's role was cut down in the final edit, her character
does get a nice easter egg to her comic book origin when she visits the shopping mall with
Scott, Jean and Nightcrawler.
In the comics, Jubilee runs away from an orphanage and hides out in a shopping mall, discovering
her mutant powers while trying to get away from a security guard.
When everyone wakes up at the X-Mansion during Jean's nightmare, Professor X tells several
young mutants to return to their rooms, referencing Mary Poppins when he says "spit-spot, back
to bed!"
When Charles goes to Moira's office and learns she has a son, his reaction not only reflects
the shock and disappointment he feels as he fancies Moira, but it's also a nod to her
son in the comics.
In the comics, Moira's son Kevin becomes the deadly villain Proteus and Bryan Singer has
mentioned that he'd like Proteus to appear in a future X-Men movie.
The scene also alludes to Charles and Moira's romantic relationship in the comics and their
kiss at the end of First Class.
When Charles battles Apocalypse, the stress of using his powers causes him to lose his
hair, which in the comics happens in his teens again as a result of his mutant powers.
And the way Apocalypse grows in size as he and Charles fight each other is a nod to his
giant size in the comics and how he's able to change his size there.
The opening scene where Apocalypse is trapped in a collapsing pyramid is an homage to the
1955 movie Land of the Pharaohs, in which the villain Princess Nellifer played by Joan
Collins is deliberately trapped inside the Pharaoh's tomb by a huge stone.
Magneto's words to Charles "Doesn't it ever wake you up in the middle of the night, the
feeling that someday, they'll come for you and your children?" and Charles' reply "I
feel a great swell of pity for the poor soul that comes to my school looking for trouble"
are almost a direct echo of what Magneto and Charles said to each other at the very end
of the first X-Men movie.
And there's a callback to X-Men 2 when Professor X reads from TH White's novel, The Once And
Future King, at the X-Mansion.
At the end of the second X-Men film, Charles asked his students if they'd ever read the
book and earlier in the film Magneto was reading it while he was imprisoned in his plastic
cell.
The book also makes a number of appearances in the X-Men comics, for example, in X-Tinction
Agenda, it's said to be Professor X's favourite book.
Charles actually quotes from The Once And Future King that "the past must be obliterated
and a new start made.
Let us now start fresh without remembrance rather than live forward and backward at the
same time", which is an inside joke that pokes fun at the confusing and often-times inconsistent
timeline of the X-Men movie franchise.
There's also a funny moment when Charles says about Moira that she looks like she's barely
aged a day, which again is the filmmakers poking fun at the franchise's inconsistencies
as actress Rose Byrne who plays Moira certainly doesn't look 20 years older than she does
in First Class, the events of which took place 2 decades before the events of this movie.
And there's another joke about the X-Men franchise when Jubilee, Jean Grey, Cyclops and Nightcrawler
exit the movie theatre having just seen Return of the Jedi.
When Jean says "we can all agree that the third one is the worst", it's a joke by writer
Simon Kinberg that The Last Stand which he also wrote is generally considered to be the
worst movie in the first X-Men trilogy.
Bryan Singer is a huge Star Trek fan and building on the Star Trek reference in Days of Future
Past, the 1967 Star Trek episode "Who Mourns For Adonais?"
plays in the background on the TV at Storm's house in Cairo after she brings Apocalypse
back to her home.
The god Apollo who appears in the episode shares a similarity with Apocalypse, calling
the members of the Enterprise his "children" and later also growing to a gigantic size
just like Apocalypse does.
Actress Ally Sheedy plays Scott Summers' teacher, who we see educating her students about the
history of the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, in other words, the events of Days of Future
Past.
It's fun to see Sheedy playing a teacher, especially as she orders Scott to see the
School Principal for disrupting the class, as one of Sheedy's most famous roles is in
director John Hughes' coming-of-age movie The Breakfast Club where she played compulsive
liar Allison, who spends a whole Saturday in detention with four other high-school students.
Stan Lee gets a new X-Men cameo, this time joined by his wife Joan Lee, as they watch
the world's nuclear missiles being fired into space by Apocalypse.
The post-credits scene includes a nice tease for the supervillain Mr Sinister.
In the scene we see a trio of suited men walking into the Alkali Lake Weapon X facility where
they pick up a vial labelled Weapon X DNA.
The vial is then stored in a briefcase labelled Essex Corp, with Essex referring to Dr Nathanial
Essex from the comics.
Essex is a Darwinist geneticist obsessed with developing a superior species and he's transformed
into Mr Sinister by none other than Apocalypse.
In the comics, Mr Sinister has a history of cloning other mutants and the vial of Weapon
X DNA is a big easter egg to Wolverine's female clone X-23 appearing in either Wolverine 3
or future X-Men movies.
And if you'd like a more detailed breakdown of that scene and its implications for the
X-Men movie universe, you can click right here for my full video on the post-credits.
So those were all the easter eggs and references I spotted in X-Men Apocalypse, but I'm sure
you noticed others too and I'd love to hear about them in the comments section.
Also make sure you're subscribed for a chance to win this pack of cool X-Men merch.
And you can click on the Gleam link in the video description below for bonus ways to
enter the giveaway.
If you enjoyed this video, you might like to watch my full post-credits breakdown of
what the Mr Sinister tease means for Wolverine 3 and other X-Men movies, or for more easter
eggs you could check out my video of all the easter eggs and references from Captain America
Civil War.
Click any of the links here to check those out.
Thanks for watching and see you next time!
Yippee ki-yay movie lovers!