For the second time in our lifetimes, we’ve seen Jean Grey and the Phoenix / Dark Phoenix sagas just utterly shat on.
Two movies, two attempts, two failures. What’s particularly frustrating about this film and the previously Fox attempts to do the Phoenix is how far they are from the source material. And that material is pretty damn good; in the animated show, it was certainly one of my favorite arcs and for the avid comicbook lover, the main and Dark storylines routinely top X-Men lists. If you want to dive into these stories deeper, I definitely recommend reading them or jumping over to Comic Book Girl 19’s Youtube channel for super cool breakdowns on each saga. With that out of the way, let’s chat about what went wrong with Dark Phoenix:
X-Men: First Class director Matthew Vaughn recently opened up about his original plans for the rebooted X-Men franchise, where Days of Future Past is the third and/or fourth film in the series, moving Apocalypse up or doing something different in order to give us more time with the new mutants (Jean Grey, Cyclops, Nightcrawler, Storm, etc.) so that their impact in the final two films is more significant.
Fox scrapping that plan has never been more noticeable than this film. It’s painful how much we don’t care for these characters. So much of their concerns and emotional outbursts never hit home. Even our usual standout actors, James McAvoy (Professor Xavier) and Michael Fassbender (Magneto) felt like they phoned this one in. Unfortunately, it’s a big case of been there, done that resulting in a pretty flat experience.
If we’re going to compare Dark Phoenix with X-Men: The Last Stand, first-time director Simon Kinberg (also writer of this film and Last Stand if that umm…tells you anything) at least incorporated more of the cosmic elements like the D’Bari alien race, Jean Grey getting her powers in space, so parts of the film felt closer, if still off from the source material.
As far as action and special effects are concerned, the train sequence finale was a particularly good showcase of how awesome the X-Men can be when their kicking on all cylinders. In that way, it was reminiscent (not equal to, just reminded me) of the best MCU team-ups in Avengers and/or solo Marvel movies.
A solid send-off wasn’t in the cards this time around. It’s rather unfortunate given this will likely be the last time we see this set of actors together. Fox amazingly cast X-Men the first time in 2000 with Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellan, and more. They followed that up by nailing their Professor Xavier and Magneto replacements in James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender, with several more sprinkled in for good measure, like Nicholas Hoult’s Beast, Jennifer Lawrence’s Mystique or even Evan Peter’s Quicksilver.
That said, if you want to remember this reboot series at it’s best, go check out Days of Future Past, Logan, or First Class which are easily the strongest X-Men movies we have. If you were considering giving this one a chance, I’d save your money for another time
X-Men Dark Phoenix: 3 out of 10
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