Magneto in Auschwitz (Yes, Seriously)
After the events of Days of Future Past and murdering JFK (sorta), X-Men Apocalypse has Michael Fassbender’s Magneto living in Poland under a fake identity and forming a family. Unfortunately for him, a series of earthquakes caused by Apocalypse’ reawakening causes some equipment to almost kill a coworker, and he uses his powers in the heat of the moment to save him. Someone else in the factory saw him and reported him to the police, which ended with his wife and daughter killed shortly before Magneto murders the police. Apocalypse tracks him down and takes him to the place where he was born…Auschwitz.
This is a legit jarring moment. While Fassbender sells the hell out of the pain Erik is feeling as he taps into his powers, it’s incredibly awkward to have him dressed as a normal person while everyone else looks like they’re just coming from a cosplay shoot in the remnants of one of the most horrific sites on the planet. (Olivia Munn keeps looking around, bewildered, like even she can’t believe that they actually wrote this scene in.) Destroying the concentration camp is weird enough, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the ending, wherein Erik uses his abilities to terraform the planet before deciding to betray Apocalypse and help the X-Men defeat him. Somehow, the rest of the world is told that Erik contributed to Apocalypse’s defeat and more or less ignores the part where he turned Cairo and the part of the world to dust. He just rebuilds the mansion and refuses Charles’ offer to stay at the school, ending things with a “goodbye, old friend.” The fact that he just walks off and gets away with everything makes you wonder what other BS he can get away with in the eyes of Charles and everyone else.
