Angel Being Angel
Somehow, through the magic of time travel I guess, the Angel from the third X-Men film was born in the 1970s and is a teenager (at the very least) here in X-Men Apocalypse. He’s dominating as a mutant cage fighter in Berlin until he fights Nightcrawler and gets one of his wings damaged as a result. During his drunken stupor, he’s visited by Apocalypse, Storm, and Psylocke and turned into the third Horseman, Death. Not unlike when Apocalypse makes him a Horseman in the comics, Angel is given metal wings and for some reason in the movies, he’s got a stupid facial tattoo.
A big problem in the movie across all characters is that the mutants have a tendency to forget they have their powers, and nowhere is this more apparent than with Angel. After Nightcrawler teleports Angel into a closed off section of debris, he stays in there for two or three minutes before deciding to use his razor sharp wings to cut himself an opening. He and Psylocke give chase to the X-Men as they try to flee after saving the Professor, but the X-Men teleport away and send their war plane crashing. Psylocke manages to bolt at the last minute, but Angel isn’t so lucky and dies in the plane crash.
Let’s just reiterate that: Angel, the guy with wings, dies in a plane crash. Yeah, it’s exactly as stupid as it sounds, and Apocalypse says what we’re all thinking at that moment as he calls his fallen Horseman “pathetic”.
