Review of Dark Phoenix (2019) by Colginator — 07 Jun 2019

Do you know the definition of insanity? It's doing the same thing over and over again expecting something to change. Only 13 years after their first attempt to do a film of the Phoenix saga, Fox hired Simon Kinberg, the same writer who previously adapted the story for X-men Last Stand, to do another take on the story and also that he should helm the film in his directorial debut. Unsurprisingly, we've gotten another failed attempt at doing the story justice and an unsatisfying conclusion to a franchise which has been evolving for 19 years.

The X-men franchise has never been the best at maintaining a clear continuity, but this time it feels like we've missed entire films that would be required to fill the gaps in between this and Apocalypse. There's almost a 30 year gap between this film and First Class, but our leads haven't even aged a decade. Jean and Cyclops went from getting to know each other in the previous film to being in love at the start of the film. Magneto has apparently been forgiven for nearly killing everyone (several times), has given up on his grudge against humanity and set up the island of Genosha as a safe haven for mutants. And at some point Xavier has pretty much ended the prejudice towards mutants and his X-men, being in direct communication with the President and being sent out to complete missions as a sign of the newfound peace between humanity and mutants.

Whilst they're out on one of these missions, Jean comes into contact with a mysterious alien force giving her the powers of the Phoenix. You may be wondering how this connects with the previous film where she's shown briefly wielding these powers, but just like the Mister Sinister tease at the end of Apocalypse this is never explained.

After taking on these powers, Jean begins to become corrupted by her power and losing control putting all those around her in great danger. This is certainly an improvement over Last Stand, with the inclusion of the alien presence being a somewhat more loyal take on the source material and a strong performance from Turner showing us Jeans inner conflict battling her increasing insanity caused by the powers of the Phoenix.

But even with this focus on Jean, we never get the emotional resonance the story requires, in large part due to the lack of build up to such a major storyline in the previous films. The original Phoenix story from the comics was so effective was because the characters were developed across years of storytelling. But we've only known this version of Jean from one other movie where she was only ever a supporting character. Just like Last Stand before it, the film is rushing to these massive story moments without ever laying down the groundwork for us to feel connected to Jean to begin with.

Everyone else in the film just feels like they're all on autopilot, just going through the motions of the story and not offering anything interesting or that we haven't seen before from previous films. Though this is not tho the fault of the actors, who mostly do the best with the material given. Instead it's more due to the screenplay, which is more focused on moving the story forwards and never spends enough time allowing the characters to react to everything happening on screen. We never even get another creative bullet-time set piece from Quicksilver, in spite of these being high points of the previous two films. Instead he gets sidelined along with Storm and Nightcrawler who are never really given anything to do.

Though the films greatest mistake is simply how boring it is. Last Stand was a cluttered mess, but at least it had memorable moments such as Magneto moving the Golden Gate Bridge, Wolverines final confrontation with Jean and the film still felt conclusive. In contrast this film has no re-watch value and never feels climactic. Instead it just feels like a tacked on attempt Fox made to add a last film to the franchise before being absorbed by Disney to join the MCU. At least we still have Logan to provide us with some real closure for this franchise.