Review of Dark Phoenix (2019) by Mrmoviebuff — 06 Jun 2019

The 'X-Men' franchise comes to a disappointing and forgettable end with another attempt at looking into the iconic "Phoenix" saga, which we saw was attempted back with 'X-Men: The Last Stand' (2006), and for many, it can't get as bad or worse than that.

You will now look at "The Last Stand" as fondly as we look at 'X-Men: Days of Future Past' (2014), because "Dark Phoenix" is a bland, boring and as I said, forgettable entry into this once invincible franchise.

A good and talented cast goes to waste with a flat screenplay, some horrible pacing and moments of unintentional hilarity. The movie starts off where we see Jean Grey as a child, for some reason, struggling to cope with adapting to her powers, everything around her is too loud and she seems to react by using her telepathy powers to lift any object and thrash them towards others where they could potentially be hurt or killed.

Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) decides to take her in and possibly teach her how to concentrate and use her powers for better use instead of harm and death. We see that the group of "X-Men", including; Mystique (a rather bored looking Jennifer Lawrence), Beast (also bored Nicholas Hoult), Quicksilver (Evan Peters, actually trying), Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee), Storm (Alexandra Shipp), Cyclops (Tye Sheridan) and Jean (Sophie Turner).

Something goes wrong during their space mission (when does anything ever go right in a superhero movie space mission?) and it seems that Jean has encountered a strange power source which has made her more dangerous than before.

The rest of the gang try to get a better understanding of this, but are unable to figure out what is wrong. It also seems that Xavier finally got the respect from the public he's always wanted, with the public always cheering for mutants to save the day and sort out many problems.

Jessica Chastain is in this movie. Why? Not sure, she's in it, and she's wasted, that's all you need to know. Magneto (Michael Fassbender) returns as well, and even Fassbender's performance can't save himself from drowning in a dull movie.

Not only written by Simon Kinberg (who also wrote "The Last Stand", but redeemed himself writing "Days of Future Past") takes his directorial feature film debut here. It's not a bad effort, the special effects look nice, and he seems to handle it okay, but one can't help but wonder if it was handled by someone with big-budget blockbuster experience and we would get a much better film.

The film just feels extremely underwhelming, and the middle portion of it is frustratingly slow-paced and rather boring. It doesn't feel like a big finale or a big send-off. They should have left that to either 'X-Men: Days of Future Past' (2014) or 'Logan' (2017), this falls flat.

It's the kind of film you'd put on in the background while doing some work, and it's the kind of film you'll forget you even saw. You'll look at your movie calendar in shock and say; "Oh, 'Shazam!' and 'Avengers: Endgame' were released the same year as this?", it's not worth wasting a rather short 1 hour and 52 minutes on, even the movie itself wants to be over and done with.

There is no post-credits scene, just get up and leave, or don't see it at all.