Movie review
May 18, 2016 · 144 min · PG-13
Woke Score
Lower is better
Review
X-Men: Apocalypse depicts the young X-Men team uniting under Professor X and Mystique to stop the ancient mutant Apocalypse, who awakens in 1983 and seeks to destroy human civilization to impose his vision of mutant supremacy and remake the world. The narrative follows standard superhero team-building, power discoveries, and large-scale battles against a god-like villain and his Horsemen recruits. The film carries the franchise's recurring mutant prejudice and coexistence themes as a central but lightly handled backdrop without modern activist dialogue, identity signaling, or institutional reframing.
Breakdown
These are the editorial factors and ratings behind our score for X-Men: Apocalypse.
Woke representation / casting
All roles follow source material, comic precedents, and narrative logic with natural global mutant diversity; no audience-visible forced emphasis or character mismatches.
Woke political dialogue
Standard X-Men exchanges on prejudice, tolerance, and rejecting genocidal supremacy recur without modern activist slogans or identity-specific lectures.
Identity-driven story themes
The mutant group as a persecuted identity fighting for acceptance and against domination forms the central recurring engine for team arcs and conflict.
Western institutional / cultural critique
Portrays rejection of tyrannical false gods, cults, and stagnant power structures in ancient and 1980s settings; villain-framed and not reframed as commentary on modern institutions or identity categories.
Woke character or canon changes
Not relevant — no reinterpretations or alterations to established characters or events tied to identity.
Anti-woke backlash and complaints
Limited to progressive backlash against a marketing poster for violence imagery and one fringe "atheist propaganda" note; no meaningful claims the story pushes woke, activist, or left-wing messaging.
Creator track record context
Singer's X-Men body of work repeatedly employs the prejudice allegory, but without public activist framing or a pattern of explicit identity-driven projects beyond franchise norms.
Production
