This was my 250th consecutive week of going to the movies and I’m going to say something for perhaps the first time: This movie isn’t nearly as bad as people are making it out to be. No, it isn’t great and “it’s not that bad” isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement, but people need to calm the fuck down with calling this one of the worst superhero movies ever made. I mean, really? Have these people seen Batman & Robin or Fantastic Four? Or even Spiderman 3? Dark Phoenix isn’t great, but it’s not terrible either and sure as hell doesn’t deserve to be in the same company as those fucking disasters. It’s a middle-of-the-road superhero movie; no more, no less.
Dark Phoenix (not sure why they dropped “X-Men” from the title) is based on probably the most revered X-Men comic book storyline of all time. The team is sent on a rescue mission in space and, in the process, Jean Grey becomes possessed by some sort of entity that gradually turns her evil. Since she is probably the most powerful X-Man, this is a problem and the rest of the team is split on what they want to do. One group decides that she needs to be stopped while the other group decides that she needs to be saved and an inevitable conflict ensues. If any of this sounds familiar, it’s because it was also the source material for X-Men: The Last Stand back in 2006. That movie was also almost universally disliked, so what did 20th Century Fox do? They rehired the same writer as The Last Stand, made him a director this time, gave him a $200 million budget and said “hey, try to fuck up less this time!” Now that this movie has bombed so hard, I assume that they will make that guy the chairman of the board any day now.
I will say, and seem to be in the minority on this, that I think that this is an improvement on The Last Stand. But I can also see why people don’t particularly like it. Compared to the previous X-Men movies, and recent superhero movies in general, this feels kind of small. There is an outer space sequence and a couple of fairly big action set pieces, but it feels almost inconsequential compared to X-Men: Apocalypse or Days of Future Past. There is a reduction in scope that makes the film feel somewhat anticlimactic. I don’t think that anything is done particularly badly, it’s just that nothing stands out. Nothing pissed me off, but there is nothing that I will remember either. As the final entry in a series that dates back 19 years, it ends things on an indifferent shoulder shrug.
Perhaps the problem is Jean Grey herself. Since the character was retconned a few entries ago, the new version (played by Sophie Turner) only had a brief appearance in X-Men Apocalypse prior to this film. Audiences just don’t have enough reason to be invested in the character, which is a problem since she is supposed to be the emotional core of the film. Turner does a solid enough job with it, it’s just that the character hasn’t earned this. It’s like watching the third act of a character arc that didn’t have a beginning. James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender have been the real core of this series since First Class and again give stellar performances here. I’m going to miss these guys in these roles and I’m glad that they didn’t get the memo that this movie was just being phoned-in. Jennifer Lawrence did get that memo, but she still isn’t bad. Yeah, I can tell that she has wanted out of this series for about three movies now. But even a subpar performance from her is still okay.
Aside from the general meh-ness of it, I have two main complaints, one legitimate and one nitpicky bullshit. First, there is a completely pointless subplot about aliens trying to find Jean because the Phoenix entity destroyed their planet or something. I don’t know. This whole storyline needlessly complicates matters, ground the film to a halt and could have been (and should have been) cut out of the movie. Second, how fucking old are Professor X and Magneto? This takes place in 1992, thirty years after the events in First Class, but they look the fucking same. Also, since this takes place in 1992, we are now only 8 years away from the events in the first X-Men movie. So James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender have looked the same since 1962, but in the next eight years they will turn into Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen? I don’t fucking buy it.
I don’t think this movie is awful, but I’m also struggling for particularly good things to say about it. I haven’t read a lot of X-Men comics, so I can’t comment on how close this is to the original story. I also thought that X-Men: Apocalypse was fine, and I seem to be in the minority on that one too. The film’s biggest crime is probably it’s lack of ambition in the context of both the source material and its role as the culmination of a series that started when I was a freshman in high school. But now that our Disney overlords have purchased 20th Century Fox, the next time that we see the X-Men they will be incorporated into the Marvel Cinematic Universe along with the Fantastic Four. With all of those classic characters now under the same roof, I’m sure I will be getting that Howard the Duck movie any day now.
Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Phoenix_(film)#/media/File:Dark_Phoenix_(film).png
