Review of Dark Phoenix (2019) by Arvind100 — 15 Jun 2019

X-Men: Dark Phoenix.

A superhero movie franchise that preceded all in the Marvel universe. It all began at the start of the new millennium with Bryan Singer's X-Men. The success of X-Men gave rise to sequels, prequels and spinoffs for the big and small screen alike.

After Fox conveniently reset the X-Men universe in Days of Future Past, they were in the clear to adapt the Dark Phoenix storyline yet again with focus on the cosmic origins of the force. Simon Kinberg (scribe for many X-Men movies) makes his directorial debut with Dark Phoenix and yes he definitely makes one hell of a mess. Dark Phoenix boasts of a stellar cast, but they are limited in what they are given to do. Sophie Turner does make a compelling Jean Grey/Phoenix. She is clearly the best thing about the movie. James McAvoy's Professor X is convincing enough. Michael Fassbender, Tye Sheridan, Nicholas Hoult & Jennifer Lawrence are as good as the props on set (they serve their purpose). Jessica Chastain is worse than Malekith from Thor: The Dark World. There are no dimensions to this villain.

But to be honest, Dark Phoenix is way better than the **** excuse for a movie called X-Men: Apocalypse. I still wonder why Apocalypse was better recieved than Dark Phoenix. A movie that killed the most powerful being in the Marvel Universe in an instant! The X-Men franchise deserved a better finale especially for a franchise that is two decades old. Fox never thought big. They had both the X-Men & Fantastic Four but they messed them up. It's very sad to see this franchise bite the dust in such a sad & pathetic manner. Hopefully, the MCU handles these properties better.

Dark Phoenix is the first Fox-Marvel movie to be distributed by Walt Disney Studios (post acquisition). New Mutants would be the last movie in the X-Men series that began at Fox. It will release in 2020.