X-Men: ApocalypseSave

Ancient Egypt, 3600 BC. The Nile valley civilization. A massive limestone pyramid is being constructed on the outskirts of what would later become Cairo. En Sabah Nur (Oscar Isaac, in elaborate blue-and-gold prosthetic makeup) — the world's oldest known mutant — has ruled Egypt as a god-king for centuries. He has mastered the ability to transfer his consciousness into younger mutant bodies, granting him functional immortality across millennia. His current body is failing; he is in the middle of a consciousness-transfer ritual into a young mutant volunteer when the Egyptian populace — long ago disillusioned with their tyrant-god — revolts. They collapse the pyramid on top of En Sabah Nur during the ritual. Trapped in the rubble mid-transfer, his consciousness enters suspended animation. He will sleep for 5,600 years.

The Four Horsemen — En Sabah Nur's mutant lieutenants who had been guarding the consciousness-transfer ritual — survive the pyramid collapse. They flee into the desert and become the legendary 'Horsemen' of various ancient mythologies. The film implies that each successive incarnation of En Sabah Nur (across his many centuries of rule) had a different Four Horsemen — Death, War, Pestilence, Famine — who served as his mortal-mutant enforcers. The four mythological 'Horsemen' across world cultures are canonically a direct reference to En Sabah Nur's actual historical mutant lieutenants. The Egyptian uprising marks the end of his ancient reign and the beginning of his 5,600-year coma.

Cut to: 1983. The world has changed. Following the events of X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), mutants have been part of the public conversation for a decade. Mutant rights are debated openly in newspapers. Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters in Westchester is full of mutant students. Charles Xavier (James McAvoy, 43 years old) has been running the school for ten years; his student roster includes new young X-Men: Scott Summers / Cyclops (Tye Sheridan), Jean Gray (Sophie Turner), Kurt Wagner / Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee), and Ororo Munroe / Storm (Alexandra Shipp, in a young Storm role).

Erik Lehnsherr / Magneto (Michael Fassbender, 39 years old) has been living a quiet life in Poland under a false identity for years. He has been working at a steel mill, married to a Polish woman, and has a young daughter. His mutation has been suppressed; he has chosen, finally, to be ordinary. One day at the steel mill, a workplace accident kills three coworkers; Magneto saves them via instinctive magnetic-power manipulation. Local police investigate. The investigation reveals his true identity. The Polish authorities — fearing the international Magneto — coordinate a raid on his home. During the raid, an accidental arrow-strike kills Magneto's wife and daughter. He returns to militant mutant activism in grief. The Polish forest sequence that follows is one of the film's strongest individual moments.

An archaeological dig in Cairo, financed by a cult of mutant-supremacist enthusiasts who have been studying ancient mutant lore, accidentally reactivates En Sabah Nur's pyramid. The ancient mutant awakens after 5,600 years. He is disoriented by the modern world but quickly adapts. He absorbs information about contemporary civilization via telepathic broadcasts from local newspapers and television. He recognizes that humans have technologically surpassed his ancient reign — but also that he is still substantially more powerful than any individual modern mutant. He decides to recruit four modern mutant 'Horsemen' to serve him, then to wipe out all of human civilization and rebuild Earth as a mutant-only society.

En Sabah Nur recruits his Four Horsemen. Magneto, grieving and recently radicalized, accepts the role of War. Ororo / Storm, a teenage Kenyan street mutant, is offered Death — she agrees because En Sabah Nur grants her an enhanced version of her weather abilities. Psylocke (Olivia Munn) — a mind-bending mercenary who has been working for various mutant-supremacist factions — is offered Pestilence. Warren Worthington III / Angel (Ben Hardy) — an underground-fighting mutant with feathered wings — is offered Famine and given metal-wings to replace his organic ones. The four-Horsemen recruitment sequence runs approximately 20 minutes and was widely cited by critics as the film's strongest middle act.

En Sabah Nur's plan is revealed. He uses his ability to amplify other mutants' powers to greatly enhance Magneto's magnetic abilities — Magneto can now lift entire cities. He uses this power to launch every nuclear weapon on Earth into orbit, removing them from the planet's surface. The simultaneous global nuclear-weapon launch is one of the film's most-striking single visual sequences; the launches occur in Washington D.C., Moscow, London, Beijing, and Tel Aviv simultaneously, with every missile's flight path arcing into low Earth orbit. Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) realizes the magnitude of En Sabah Nur's plan through Cerebro telepathic monitoring of the global crisis. The X-Men assemble for the final confrontation.

Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) — now an internationally-respected mutant icon since the events of Days of Future Past (2014) — has been operating as a freelance mutant-rescue agent across Europe. She has rescued young Nightcrawler from a mutant-fighting cage match in East Berlin. She brings him back to Westchester. The team assembles: Charles, Hank McCoy / Beast (Nicholas Hoult), Mystique, Quicksilver / Peter Maximoff (Evan Peters), and a group of the school's most-advanced students — Cyclops, Jean Gray, Nightcrawler, Storm. Charles plans to use Cerebro to telepathically broadcast a message to En Sabah Nur, attempting to negotiate. The plan goes catastrophically wrong.

En Sabah Nur uses Charles's Cerebro broadcast to telepathically possess Charles himself — using Charles's amplified telepathic powers to broadcast En Sabah Nur's consciousness to every world capital. Charles is forced to address every world government simultaneously, threatening apocalyptic mutant rule. Mystique disconnects Cerebro at the last possible moment, saving the world capitals from En Sabah Nur's direct broadcast. The team realizes that En Sabah Nur has been planning to use Charles's body as his next host vessel via the Cerebro telepathic linkage. The X-Men have approximately 6 hours to stop the consciousness-transfer ritual before En Sabah Nur permanently takes over Charles's body.

The X-Men's mansion is destroyed by En Sabah Nur's mutant lieutenants. The Westchester mansion's destruction sequence becomes the film's most-celebrated moment — Quicksilver, using his super-speed abilities, evacuates every student from the burning mansion in approximately 90 seconds of slow-motion footage set to the Eurythmics' 'Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This).' The sequence runs approximately 4 minutes of choreographed slow-motion and is widely considered the franchise's best Quicksilver moment after Days of Future Past (2014)'s Pentagon kitchen scene. The mansion is destroyed; every student is evacuated; Quicksilver collapses on the lawn from the exertion. The X-Men team — now homeless — heads for Cairo to confront En Sabah Nur.

Cairo. The X-Men confront En Sabah Nur and his Horsemen at the ancient pyramid site where his consciousness-transfer ritual is taking place. The fight is the franchise's most-mutant-heavy single battle: Storm vs. Storm (the senior X-Men's Halle Berry-played Storm doesn't exist in this timeline, but the film implies the young Alexandra Shipp Storm will become her senior counterpart), Magneto vs. the rest of the X-Men, Psylocke vs. Beast, Angel vs. Quicksilver, En Sabah Nur vs. Charles Xavier (telepathically). The choreography is fully CGI-driven, set in a sandstorm visual environment. The fight runs approximately 35 minutes — the franchise's longest single action sequence through 2016.

Jean Gray accesses her latent Phoenix powers during the third-act battle. The Phoenix Force — Jean's canonical cosmic energy source that would later define her character arc in Dark Phoenix (2019) — emerges from her body as a massive fiery telekinetic manifestation. She uses the Phoenix Force to defeat En Sabah Nur directly — burning him to ash with cosmic-fire telekinesis. The sequence is one of the franchise's most-visually-striking Phoenix moments; Sophie Turner has stated in interviews that she 'had no idea the Phoenix would look that powerful' when she filmed the scene. The ash that remains of En Sabah Nur is collected by Charles for future research; the Apocalypse threat is canonically ended.

The film's epilogue. Mystique, Magneto, and Charles reunite as the X-Men's senior leadership. Erik returns to his Brotherhood for one last act of helping evacuate Cairo civilians from the destruction. The film closes with Charles establishing a new generation of X-Men at the partially-rebuilt Westchester mansion: Cyclops, Jean Gray, Nightcrawler, and Storm. The team enters formal training. The Apocalypse threat is over but the broader mutant-vs-human tension remains. The post-credits scene introduces a mysterious figure collecting William Stryker's recovered Apocalypse-blood-samples from an Egyptian-research facility container; the container is labeled 'Essex Corp.' This is a setup for the planned Apocalypse sequel involving Mr. Sinister / Nathaniel Essex — a setup that has been canceled along with broader Fox X-Men franchise plans.

Commercial and critical aftermath. X-Men: Apocalypse grossed $543 million worldwide on a $178 million production budget — modest commercial success but a significant decline from X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)'s $748 million. Critical reception was widely negative; Rotten Tomatoes 47%, with critics citing the convoluted plot, the over-large ensemble cast, the unconvincing villain design, and Bryan Singer's increasingly-noticeable creative fatigue. Singer's exit from the franchise after this film was widely expected; he was officially fired by Fox after sexual assault allegations against him surfaced in 2017. The Apocalypse sequel was canceled; Simon Kinberg eventually directed Dark Phoenix (2019) as the franchise's final entry.