Rose McGowan Is Very Pissed Off About An “X-Men: Apocalypse” Billboard

That will probably be the most random headline I write all day.

Rose McGowan is super angry about a billboard she recently saw promoting the film X-Men: Apocalypse. The billboard, which is one of several different ones, shows Oscar Isaac’s character Apocalypse choking out Jennifer Lawrence’s character Mystique. My knowledge of X-Men is limited to the Saturday morning animated series on FOX and whatever I’m able to remember from the time I snuck into X2 after The Lizzie McGuire Movie. So I don’t exactly remember anything about Apocalypse being that type of dude. But regardless of whether he is or not, Rose McGowan isn’t here for a billboard featuring what Rose thinks looks like an act of domestic abuse. A picture of the billboard is after the cut.

The billboard is of course a scene in the movie, but Rose isn’t feeling the choice of blowing it up huge for all to see. Rose originally called out the billboard on Facebook last week by saying “Fuck this shit. Which studio did this?” (the studio in question is 20th Century Fox, by the way). Yesterday, she elaborated on her original message by releasing a statement to The Hollywood Reporter about it.

“There is a major problem when the men and women at 20th Century Fox think casual violence against women is the way to market a film. There is no context in the ad, just a woman getting strangled. The fact that no one flagged this is offensive and frankly, stupid. The geniuses behind this, and I use that term lightly, need to to take a long hard look at the mirror and see how they are contributing to society. Imagine if it were a black man being strangled by a white man, or a gay male being strangled by a hetero? The outcry would be enormous. So let’s right this wrong. 20th Century Fox, since you can’t manage to put any women directors on your slate for the next two years, how about you at least replace your ad?

“I’ll close with a text my friend sent, a conversation with his daughter. It follows: ‘My daughter and I were just having a deep discussion on the brutality of that hideous X-Men poster yesterday. Her words: ‘Dad, why is that monster man committing violence against a woman?’ This from a 9-year-old. If she can see it, why can’t Fox?”

Rose isn’t the only person hissing “Really, bitch?” at 20th Century Fox’s marketing department. A whole bunch of people with Twitter accounts chimed in as well. So far, 20th Century Fox hasn’t said anything about it.

When I first saw that billboard, my first thought was that it kind of looked like an ad warning Smurfs about the dangers of steroid abuse. So I sort of agree with Rose that it’s a little weird that Fox used that specific image of Oscar Isaac and JLaw to market the movie. Especially since there are so many other scenes they could have picked from. Like this one:

I think I speak for all of us when I say that they’d receive zero complaints if they had put a picture of JLaw in a lace-up ho shirt and scrunch spray curls on a giant billboard.

Pics: Wenn.com, The Hollywood Reporter