Review of Dark Phoenix (2019) by The_Man_Xx — 10 Jun 2019

Oh boy these X-Men movies have fallen very far from what they used to be, I mean Fox didn’t completely ruin their legacy but since this is most likely the last X-Men movie with this cast let’s just say it ended on a very disappointing note.

There is very little to remember about this movie and again this is disappointing to say when these X-Men movies from Fox usually have a rich storyline look at First Class or Days of Future past amazing storytelling even Apocalypse which was just an okay movie had a decent storyline. The story was just not interesting and compelling enough, it was just so mediocre and forgettable.

There was with weird plot thread though involving Charles Xavier that I wasn’t buying at all. Without saying too much the plot point was about Charles Xavier was always the bad guy in these X-Men movies and he has a massive ego that puts everyone in danger, to be fair there were moments in the movie that made you consider that a bit but when you think of the Past X-Men movies and all he has done for the X-Men it just makes zero sense, I’m all for character evolutions but this “twist” they were going for didn’t work and almost contradicted the story involving Charles in other movies. Also the performances, I really can’t say much about the performances which again is disappointing because the cast in this movie is really good there were great performances from James McAvoy(Charles Xavier) and Micheal Fassbender(Magneto) in all X-Men movies they were involved in ,but here they just gave okay performances like there isn’t one scene were I can recall an outstanding performance from anyone from the cast members. The X-Men were fine,Mystique was just there and Quicksilver was wasted, the best part about the recent X-Men movies was wasted, well done movie.

The villains were bad and I don’t mean Jean Grey I mean the actual villains that were in this movie were extremely forgettable there was a particular motivation for the villains but it was never expanded on and the villains fell very flat, Jessica Chastain who played one of the villains gave a very bleak performance with was supposed to make the villains menacing and cold but came off as dry and the movie didn’t seem explore all the necessary features of these villains for them to be interesting or compelling.

Okay the stuff I liked was the action in the closing 2nd and last act was good, I usually don’t recall the First Class series for its action scenes but Dark Phoenix had really good actions scenes and probably some of the best action scenes in all of the X-Men movies, almost every one of the X-Men that were involved in the fight scenes looked cool I have never seen Cyclops in a good action scenes in these X-Men movies but Dark Phoenix did it also Storm looked cool and Magneto always does something impressive in these movies.Also the music was decent as well, Hans Zimmer who composed the music did a fine job with the theme music especially some of the action.I know I said there wasn’t an overall great performance from Dark Phoenix but there wasn’t any terrible one either and Charles Xavier was the most compelling character of all of the characters with the story involved.

Lets talk about Jean Grey or Phoenix who the story is based on, this time they tried again and they just can’t seem to get this Phoenix story right. the story is not too different from X-Men 3 Except dark Phoenix is centered around Jean this time and there are no subplots like in X-Men 3 to slow down the plot. Sophie Turner did the best she could with the story that was there this Jean unlike in X-Men 3 didn’t have a split personality where by there was a good Jean and an Evil Jean, Dark Phoenix’s Jean was more overwhelmed with all the powers she had and didn’t know how to control her powers so and this lead to her freaking out most of the time and losing control of herself and her powers, was this the best way to reintroduce the Dark Phoenix story, no not at all.However the Jean Grey character had a very cool showcase of her powers at end of the movie.

The First act was decent it introduced the characters nicely and the plot quickly but after that the movie was just slow and dry especially in the 2nd act were the villains started to show up but didn’t really improve much then the third act with was the best part of the movie with exciting action and the epic moments that were supposed to happen as well as dramatic moments fell flat as well.

Look did I think this movie was bad , no it’s not bad at all it’s not Fan4stic or Batman and Robin but at this stage this type of movie isn’t good enough Fox hasn’t made a really good X-Men movie until Days of Future Past(excluding Logan), Apocalypse was okay and Dark Phoenix is just so mediocre and rather lazy. If this is the last X-Men movie with this cast then I’m really glad Fist Class and Days of Future Past were made but Dark Phoenix was not the end I had hoped for.