Review of Dark Phoenix (2019) by Neocomp92 — 07 Jun 2019

Compared to X-Men: The Last Stand, this movie failed in many respects to even match that movie, let alone bring the Phoenix saga properly to screen. For a film that heavily focuses on Jean Grey, I feel that it is too soon for Sophie Turner to get to this watershed moment of the character's history. We only knew her as a secondary character in Apocalypse, and now we jump to this.

The movie took way too many liberties in retcons and character assassinations that I am not sure this is either in the Singer timeline or Logan timeline. Professor X, in spite of having seen the effects of controlling the monster or trauma within Jean's mind that will eventually lead to his death, proceeds to do the same to an 8-year old Jean when her powers directly lead to the death of her mother, and caused the father to be so resentful that she was cast out to Xavier. Xavier tried to spare her the pain, suppressed that part of her life and told her her father is dead. This same Xavier, who was taught by his future self to embrace pain and empathy as the source of his power, completely forgot that lesson with Jean. SMH.

Phoenix Force is retconned to be extraterrestrial (even though in the OT and Apocalypse it is implied to be Jean's latent power). But it does not have a will of its own. Instead, when Jean absorbs it, she became emotionally disturbed, and yet a more powerful psychic than Charles in Cerebro. She found out the deception, went to find daddy, read his mind and was upset and becomes more disturbed. Fight with X-Men lead to Mystique's death.

Here is where two glaring issues with the movie arise. First, conflict is manufactured. X3 was at least justified in that the Phoenix personality was all rage, and her target was Xavier who caged her in Jean's mind. She has a vendetta with Xavier and anyone she perceives to try to cage her again. Justified. In this movie, Jean's target of rage was daddy and Xavier. Being a more powerful telepath, she saw in both their minds how the discussion of sending her off to Xavier's came. The problem is that the reveal suffers like the narrative of Luke trying to murder Kylo Ren in The Last Jedi; unreliable narrator. Except Jean stopped when she saw daddy cast her off WITHOUT seeing Xavier's response. This led to said fight and death of Mystique. Last Jedi was justified in that the reveal was oral; here the reveal is completely in Jean's control. If she played the memory a bit further, this whole conflict could have been resolved. And remember, she is only disturbed in so far as someone who just received the news of their parents' death; she is not psychotic or vengeful to try to kill either targets of her grief. The larger issue is that, until the third act fight, Jean stays in this angsty mode. Kudos to Sophie for being able to play this emotional facet competently, but when she wants to kill someone, I'm sorry but I am not buying it. She is not Famke's Xenia Onnatopp goddess level of a psychotic murderer.

Second, this movie's main casualty, Mystique, only affects Beast and Magneto. Yeah, Jean is shocked to have caused her death, but I have no idea how she is connected to Mystique any deeper than she is to Xavier and Scott. Both are alive at the end. X3 did a passable job in raising the stakes by killing the father figure (Xavier) and lover (Scott) to show how Jean/Phoenix is turning to villainy. But here, Jean will always be the tragic character, never fully villainous despite not having a split personality to "justify" the murder.

Ironic that in this SJW climate, the movie wants us to have sympathy to Jean by playing the stereotype of women being weak, emotional creatures. Jean's conflict is completely her doing, and it is never shown how she got over this character flaw of jumping to conclusions. That climax where she wants to protect "her family" is not an organic flow; even when she went with white-haired alien woman antagonist it is more to solve her Phoenix problem rather than having any real world domination or vengeful motivations. Oh yes, the alien antagonists. Forgettable ancillary characters. Ironic that for a movie shy in killing its main cast, it is actually very PG bloody. Previously Magneto and Wolverine would actively kill villains, but the climactic train fight has everyone go full lethal. Nightcrawler in particular, having Heroic BSOD, when on a killing spree of these aliens, whom we audience are told are the last of their kind. Our heroes, participating in genocide masked as self-defence. Overall, this movie can only be seen if you are willing to endure character assassinations, retcons, ridiculous conflicts and weak motivations. Even the action is very tame. Until the finale, we have very little physical demonstration of the Phoenix power (a world-destroying one that got the aliens), compared to what Magneto did in Apocalypse.