Why The Internet Thinks Jennifer Lawrence Was The Worst Thing About X-Men: Apocalypse

Mixed reviews and lukewarm fan reception have greeted Bryan Singer’s newest mutant flick over the last few days. X-Men: Apocalypse isn’t even out in North America yet, but folks here in the UK have already watched the whole thing, in all its star-studded, $234 million-costing, Oscar Isaac-dripping glory.

We’ve already talked (or, argued) for hours about all the X-Men movies, and our view of this most recent installment isn’t as hot as you might have hoped. With opinions and ideas still crystallising in everyone’s mind, we can’t even turn to Metacritic to get a sense of what everyone else thought.

In times like these, the sprawling, interconnected, slightly-bigoted hivemind of social media can shed a light on our search. We’re peeking at the thousands of tweets sent by people on the way out of the cinema – half a diet coke and popcorn crumbs in hand. In doing so, we’re getting a view of what people really thought, without the crooked media sifting it through their liberal bias.

Courtesy of: 20th Century Fox

Much like April’s Civil War, X-Men: Apocalypse seems to suffer from the sheer quantity of extra-special stars crammed into a movie that doesn’t top two and a half hours.

Sorting all of the tweets about the movie according to which mutant they mention, we now have a view into which Singer could have cut, and which could have been given a few more screen minutes.

Courtesy of: Marcus Beard, Data from Brandwatch

After analysing several thousand tweets, we found that Storm, Quicksilver and Mystique were talked about the most. Much attention was placed on the reintroduction of Storm, in a younger, more-mohawked form that is closer to the character’s classic look in the comic books than Halle Berry’s interpretation. According to Singer, this iteration of Storm is a “troubled character who is going down the wrong path in life.”

And what are these razor-sharp Twitter critics saying? “Storm speaks in about 15 to 16 lines in X-Men apocalypse her kenyan accent was verry good,” said @ser_gie. They continued: “awesome storm had a verry great presence ??????”.

Quicksilver (played by Evan Peters) instantly became a fan favourite when he and his cheeky high-speed antics debuted in Days of Future Past. Twitter is just as excited to see his return, as the character has gained 591 tweets just days after launch.

“Not that impressed by Xmen: Apocalypse. But Quicksilver was awesome.” said one commenter.

Courtesy of: Marcus Beard, Data from Brandwatch

Despite Nicholas Hoult’s Beast only getting a handful of tweets and landing at the bottom of our first chart, the love for him far outweighs the hate. In fight, he’s is practically joint first place with three others: Nightcrawler, Psylocke and Quicksilver.

Each had sentiment scores within 1% of 85% – a remarkably high level of mass approval. For every one person saying they hated Quicksilver, there were five people saying they loved him. But, wait – who’s actually against the goggle-donning hero?

“I still hate the X-Men version of Quicksilver and always will,” said @Deusraix, who has recently spit venom at other people, such as “People who vanish mid convo piss me off so much … is it so hard to say brb?”

Courtesy of: 20th Century Fox

Mystique receives the most hate online by far, with over a third of all tweets about her being negative.

Jennifer Lawrence has been generally considered The Internet’s Favourite Actress™ for quite some time (at least, you know, until that thing happened). Her portrayal of Mystique, however, has angered a few die-hard X-Men fans.

After watching, tweeter @johnny_yip said: “Weakest is Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique. Really hate this casting.”

Courtesy of: 20th Century Fox

At the time of writing, there are still a few days to go until X-Men: Apocalypse is unleashed on the North American public. It remains to be seen whether it’ll still rake in hoards of cash despite lukewarm reviews.