And so ends this version of the X-Men. It’s been a roller coaster ride for the mutant franchise. With seemingly every other film being good. That boded well for Dark Phoenix, since X-Men: Apocalypse was pretty meh. However, I’m pretty sure the sale of the 20th Century Fox corporation dragged this movie down into the dregs of the lesser X-Men films. Maybe that’s why Disney and Marvel bought 20th Century Fox: they were buying low on the X-Men.
Formula dictates the new X-Men film is in a new decade: now in the 1990s. Charles Xavier’s (James McAvoy) X-Men are now readily accepted, having done a lot of public good, including a very recent space rescue mission. Not all is well internally among the team however, Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) objects to what she sees as Professor X’s ego trip. Things get thrown way out of wack when Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) comes out of that rescue mission completely changed; she’s more powerful than ever, but she’s also more likely to lash out and hurt the people she cares about, including Raven, Cyclops (Tye Sheridan), Beast (Nicholas Hoult) or the other X-Men. Grey’s escalating uncontrollable powers pressure the X-Men to reign Jean in, though that might have unforseen, truly devastating consequences.
X-Men movies are at their best when they channel what made the comics and cartoons so great. Mutancy turns the X-Men into an allegory for any disenfranchised group. The best sequence of this inside of an X-Men movie is in X2, when the movie parallels mutant powers to coming out. What’s frustrating about Dark Phoenix is the set up is there for a great story. Jean scared and awed by her own strength is as good a story as X-Men has ever told…in the comics. There’s too much going on for any great character studies or complex emotional arcs to take place. Instead we get more punching or wild displays of mutant power (ok, all of that is pretty cool to see). There’s a subplot involving Jessica Chastain that’s so hilariously unnecessary it could just be edited out of the movie. With a couple lines of dialogue you could get what you need out of Jean Grey plotwise. The plot only matters though, if we actually care about the mutants onscreen. Sadly, only Nicholas Hoult, Sophie Turner, and Michael Fassbender get anything resembling a coherent character arc, but with the extraneous subplots and host of characters to throw into the movie, those arcs are too rushed, relying on past credibility to make the emotional stuff mean anything. I feel worst for Evan Peters, whose Quicksilver was so much fun in the last couple X-Men films that since the movie doesn’t really know how to use him, they basically sideline him instantly. Bummer, no music driven awesome montage set to a Nirvana song.
To spend any more time on Dark Phoenix would be wasting yours and my time. This movie just wants to wrap up this version of the X-Men story before Marvel could get them into an Avengers movie. I’m just unhappy there were 2 bad X-Men movies in a row, I got used to the roller coaster. Wait…Logan was between Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix! Problem solved…