Review of Dark Phoenix (2019) by Davrosdaleks1 — 06 Jun 2019

And doth the X-Men franchise goes out with a whimper rather than a bang. (The main line anyway. New Mutants still has yet to come out.) Okay, maybe I'm laying it on a bit thick. (I really wanted to say the line.) Dark Phoenix is a movie that is not particularly bad or good.

There are several plot issues. The movie tries to get away from the more action-oriented and not well critically received X-Men: Apocalypse by being more dialogue and story heavy. This leaves a lot of long scenes of talking that aren't particularly dynamic. Not to mention that the action scenes are too few and far apart. Other plot problems include: Characters make decisions that fit the plot more than feel natural. The villains, beside Dark Phoenix (Game of Thrones' Sophie Turner), just feel really wedged in without any personality. There is also a scene with them at the beginning that is the darkest and of the franchise and felt like it didn't need to go that far. An issue in the film is resolved without any real explanation.

It may be obvious at this point, but there are the two prerequisite issues that everyone has mentioned: 1) Conflicts with the time line of the other films. The last film suggested and The Last Stand stated that Jean Grey's Phoenix powers came from within, but now they come from an outside force. 2) Nicholas Hoult, James McAvoy, and Michael Fassbender needed at least a little old age makeup. We were first introduced to the characters in the 1960's and now it's the 90's. Hoult's baby-face really doesn't help.

A lot of actors sleepwalk through their roles. In the case of Hoult and Kodi Smit-McPhee, they only seem to be energized when their characters are angry. Though more effort is made to focus on the individual X-Men, some of them still don't get to do much.

As for the parts that do work: You get to see the characters go into space. The current state of human-mutant relations has made an interesting change, and that part of the world steels feel like it has stakes after all these films. Character relations are improved from Age of Apocalypse.

Turner, McAvoy, and Fassbender are the only actors to give good performances. Since we only met the new Jean Grey/Phoenix (Turner) in the last film, I was worried that they didn't have enough to adequately and sympathetically to show her shift from an enemy to a threat in a short amount of time. However, Turner really sells the role. We really feel her pain and anger. We get to see more moral grayness to McAvoy's Professor Xavier. In the last film, I thought Fassbender's Magneto felt forced in. Even if he did have the best scene in the film. Here he works a lot better.

No complaints about the fight scenes. Excellently done. The general look and music are pretty good too.

I'd rank this above Wolverine: X-Men Origins and below the other films. I know a lot of critics are saying this is better than it's predecessor, but for me Apocalypse at least had energy to it. This film just feels languid. If you're an X-Men completionist, go right ahead. This isn't a stinker. However for everyone else, this isn't a must-see.