Dark Phoenix Review

The X-Men franchise has been quite the rocky ride for me. I'm excited to get into the very specific details of that in the near future when I rank all of the X-Men movies. While I've seen a lot of people doing that right now, you're going to have to wait a bit for my list because I'm going to give "The New Mutants" a chance to come out first. At the very least I'll wait until we have official word on what Disney is planning on doing with that. But nevertheless, with the X-Men franchise, I've not been as madly in love with some of the earlier films that I'm supposed to love and I don't hate some of the middle films that I'm supposed to hate. In regards to the more recent films, "Logan" was a masterpiece, "Days of Future Past" was a lot of fun, the Deadpool movies are a romp, but "Apocalypse" felt very empty. It had some good character introductions, but overall it was yet another one of those movies where the big baddie decides to destroy the world and the heroes have to stop him. I was bored with the concept and unimpressed with the execution. Yet this is where we pick up from in this increasingly confusing timeline? Yikes! Forgive me for not being excited. In fact, it was "Apocalypse," not "Origins Wolverine" or "The Last Stand," that was my least favorite X-Men movie.

Note the word "was" in that last sentence, though. Past tense. Because "Apocalypse" is no longer my least favorite. That title now belongs to "Dark Phoenix." Truth be told, I was never on board with this movie. After the boring and lifeless "Apocalypse," the next big idea is to do the Dark Phoenix saga... AGAIN? And we're letting the guy who helped write "The Last Stand" come and direct "Dark Phoenix" in his feature-length directorial debut? And this is a... good idea? OK, fine. I like a good redemption arc. James Mangold directed "The Wolverine," and despite less than stellar reaction to that, Fox let him come back to do "Logan," where he became a household name. And in defense of Simon Kinberg, he's been a writer and producer on most of the X-Men movies, good and bad, so it's not like "The Last Stand" was the only thing he did. And as I've said, I like "The Last Stand" more than the internet tells me that I should. But still. Repeating the exact same story arc did not seem like the right direction to take this new franchise. We just spent the last three movies setting up this new generation of X-Men characters. Lets be unique and creative. Do something different. Especially because these are great actors involved that deserve something better.

So yeah, problem one here is the concept of this movie. I didn't like it. Then we have the production nightmare. This movie was supposed to come out November 2018. But then the postponed it to February 2019. When they released their very first trailer, with the date saying February 2019, the very next day the switched the release date again. This time to the current date in June. Right in the middle of the busiest part of the summer. Because that was a good idea. Reshoots were one reason to postpone it. Another reason was to let "Alita: Battle Angel" have the February release date so that it didn't have to compete with the likes of "Bumblebee" and "Aquaman" in December. In the midst of all this drama, the deal with Disney buying Fox becomes official, which sucks even more life out of the project because everyone knows Disney is just going to throw everything in the trash and start over. So why care? To add to this, I wasn't even impressed with any of the trailers. It looked like there was nothing here. All this said, is anyone surprised that this opened to a franchise low $32 million and might make less money overall domestically than many X-Men movies did in their opening weekend? Not good for a movie with a $200 million price tag with its production budget alone.

In regards to my opinion of the movie after finally seeing it, I'd say this is a situation where I was right from day one. It's exactly what I thought it was going to be. Now you may say that I was never willing to give this movie a chance. And you might have a point there. In my defense, though, the movie never gave me a reason for me to be excited. Also, just over two weeks ago, I went into "Aladdin" in a very bitter mood ready to nitpick at everything and found myself completely swept off my feet with the Disney magic. So even though I was never excited for "Dark Phoenix" and never really had the idea in my mind that this could be good, especially with the Rotten Tomatoes score in the cellar at 22 percent, I drove to the theater, I purchased a ticket to see this and I sat down in my screening. I even endured all the people around me loudly chomping on their popcorn and rustling their candy wrappers. Thus I gave this movie a chance. It had every opportunity to prove me wrong. I could've been like the food critic in "Ratatouille" when he tastes the meal at the end that unexpectedly causes him to rave about this place. But that did not happen. This angry, bitter critic begrudgingly walked into this theater and was treated to a plate of smelly cow manure.

I almost don't even know where to begin with this. When the whole thing feels like a giant mess, it's sometimes hard to hone in on just a few things that you think were wrong. So let's start with what I think might be the root of the problem. The idea behind this. In terms of the Dark Phoenix saga, the most interesting element is that Jean Grey slowly becomes more powerful and begins to lose control. The gradual rise to her becoming this evil, dark presence due to circumstances beyond her control makes for a fascinating character, especially with her previously being one of the more likable heroes. But that's not the route they go in this "Dark Phoenix" movie, not even after they started setting that up in "Apocalypse." Instead, the group of them flies to space after a team of astronauts get into serious trouble with a wreck in space. In the midst of this rescue mission, Jean Grey sucks up a solar flare and instantaneously becomes a Super Saiyan version of herself that she can't control. That's what you call the writers not being patient enough to properly set up this character. Then after some random bursts of power, she becomes upset with Charles Xavier because it turns out he purposely scrambled her memories to make her forget about her childhood trauma. I mean... what?

If Simon Kinberg was trying to redeem himself for "The Last Stand," this was a really strange way of going about it. Now it's been several years since I've seen "The Last Stand." I'll re-watch it soon before I do my rankings. But from what I can recall, any issues the movie had didn't stem from Jean Grey herself. They did a solid job setting up her character in the first two movies, which resulted in a good deal of emotional investment in her when she went rogue in the third film. But the way they took this here in "Dark Phoenix" just didn't lend itself to any emotional investment. Sophie Turner's Jean Grey was introduced in "Apocalypse," a movie that didn't carry any emotional weight, then immediately she's thrown into becoming Dark Phoenix because Simon Kinberg wanted to happen rather than it being a natural progression for her character. If they HAD to redo this specific story arc, I think it would've made more sense for them to give it more time rather than rushing right into it so soon after introducing their new Jean Grey. It makes me feel bad for Sophie Turner because she's a great young actress and this could've been a huge boost for her career, but despite her best efforts, they threw her character right into the trash can, giving her absolutely nothing to work with.

So yeah, when the core of your movie is a complete non-starter, it's really hard to care about anything that happens as things go along. Unfortunately these poor writing choices bled into every other part of the movie as well. For as much as I hate on "Apocalypse," I do remember my one praise was that they set up some interesting new X-Men characters, or rather some old characters with new actors playing them. But then they gave none of them anything to do in this sequel. And our returning characters from "First Class" and "Days of Future Past" also felt like they were just there for a paycheck. I briefly touched on Charles Xavier, but let me expand. He's supposed to be this great leader and perfect mentor. But choices he makes in this movie, in the present and via flashbacks, do not fit with his character at all. And maybe "Apocalypse" set up something that I forgot about, but I also had a hard time figuring out why Beast and Mystique were so against him in this movie even before they learned what he did to Jean Grey. I love Jennifer Lawrence and Nicholas Hoult, and I loved their character in previous movies, but they just felt completely useless and unlikable in this movie. It also doesn't help that J-Law seems to have given up on this character years ago.

Moving on to our newer characters, I honestly forgot that Ty Sheridan's Cyclops was already in love with Jean Grey at this point. Yeah, I know that's how it's supposed to be with these two, but I guess their romance in "Apocalypse" wasn't convincing enough for me to remember and they certainly have no chemistry in this movie. I do remember Storm was a villain turned hero in "Apocalypse." They gave her something to do in that movie, even though it felt a bit weird. In this movie, she's there to create some ice in a few sequences. Other than that, she's mostly forgotten about. Nightcrawler was also one who I forgot was introduced. He has a few more things to do than Storm, namely teleport people from place to place, but he also wasn't super interesting. We also bring back Quicksilver and Magneto, both of whom have been great in this new saga of X-Men movies. Quicksilver doesn't really get his moment to do his thing, though, which means they threw him in the trash. And Magneto is in this movie because of something that feels more like a contractual obligation. Fassbender does fantastic at playing him, as always, but he just didn't have much of an imposing presence. Thus none of the X-Men characters were very interesting in this movie.

And yeah, plot. That happens in this movie. Kind of. There wasn't really a strong cohesive story in this. Jean Grey sucks in the solar flare, spends a good portion of the middle section of the movie whining and complaining, then she just kinda shows up in places and plot happens with occasional action sequences that felt like they were also just happening. I was so bored and confused with the plot that either I dozed off in a few scenes or my mind was completely somewhere else. When I got back in focus, we were somewhere else in this thing they called a plot. I had to read Wikipedia page to connect a few dots. When I did, I got a solid sense that I didn't actually miss anything of importance because nothing in this movie is very useful. And speaking of not being very useful, Jessica Chastain is in this movie as this new character. But her and her croonies are the most annoying distraction in a movie that was already lacking focus. They served absolutely no purpose in the film as they really were only there as filler because apparently Simon Kinberg really wasn't having a lot of creative juices flow during his writing sessions as he felt the need to have a useless group of side characters provide unnecessary distractions in an already pointless film.

That's all I got here. It honestly does make me sad that Fox's X-Men franchise whimpers away like a dog with his tail between his legs. Even if "The New Mutants" ends up being a thing, that was always going to be its own separate spin-off thing. "Dark Phoenix" is the final film in this specific timeline. Instead of being a fitting conclusion for all of these characters, the whole thing makes me shake my head in disappointment. I want X-Men to work. When the movies are at their peak, they have some of the best characters and most interesting story arcs in all of comics. But Fox just never really had a grasp on what to do here and it feels like everyone on board here went into this final film knowing that Disney was about to take over, so there wasn't much motivation to even try. And their epic failure in driving this franchise into the ground is Disney's win. Had Fox been successful, Disney would have a tough choice in how to move forward. But with how badly "Dark Phoenix" has failed on every level, after the already disappointing "Apocalypse," Disney's decision has been made for them. Throw it in the trash and start over because continuing this story from where "Dark Phoenix" has left off would be cinematic suicide. It's that bad right now.  My grade for "Dark Phoenix" is a 4/10.