Why hello there. Have you seen Dark Phoenix yet? Thinking you might want to? Well, then don't read this if you care about spoilers. If you don't read ahead and thank you for your time.

Synopsis

The movie opens with Jean Grey as a child driving with her family. Her powers start to manifest over the radio with her mom, she causes her mom to sleep and they crash into another car with Jean being the only survivor...pr so they say. Xavier meets her, tells her that her parents are dead (I'm Batman), and he convinces her to go to the school. Fast forward, the to present X-Men time in their timeline, and the X-Men are popular and loved by all. Xavier's school is flourishing, life is good. They head to space to save some astronauts after a phone call from the president and while on this mission, the Phoenix Force shows up, possesses Jean, and now everything is turned up. She goes mad over the realization her father is alive and Xavier lied to her and this sets up the rest of the plot going forward. And there is a sub group of aliens that they barely touched on that are the main bad guys. Now its the X-Men, Magneto, and the D'bari chasing after Jean.

Pros

Fassbender: I'm just going to outright say that Fassbender was the only real good actor in this movie. I say that as a fan of Evan Peters and James McAvoy, but Fassbender really stole any scene he was in. He looked great when fighting Jean over a helicopter, he was all into it. It was great, because she wasn't. And even though he was in the movie, he didn't really do a whole lot, so he was pretty limited, but out of everyone, he was right.

Dazzler: We got Dazzler....that is all.

Final Fight: The final fight was very brief, but we see Jean start atomizing people, which was kind of cool. Aside from that, the rest of the fighting was lackluster or boring.

Xavier's Ego: While I am not going to put McAvoy as a pro in this movie for reasons I will state later, but they actually touched on the fact that Xavier at times is a douchebag, not the holier than thou, can do no wrong, mutant activist and will mess with people's minds. I get in First Class and DoFP they show him being young and all that, or depressed as all hell to the point of being broken, but they really drove that emphasis home in this movie before he kind of snaps out of that side of him later. Not really a major pro to the movie, but definitely a nice touch to see.

Cons:

Strap in, here we go.

Sophie Turner: So, I wrote a review for X-Men: Apocalypse some years back and I ragged on Sophie Turner as an actress in that movie for having a serious case of Kristen Stewart Twilight Derp face. I can in this movie, say it really isn't better. She has an amazing ability to completely disconnect her emotions, voice, and whatever her body is doing all at once. When she is sucking in the Phoenix Force, she is screaming in pain, her face looks completely apathetic. When she is fighting with Magneto over a helicopter, she looks so nervous and out of place with this half-assed hand raise while Erik is straining and going all out. Then she looks at him and is like "HAHA 2 HANDS" and then he raises 2 hands. I can see like a cocky look and hand raise because she is that much stronger, or maybe some kind of strain. Nope, none of that. No emotion. When she sounds angry, she looks bored. When she is acting angry, her voice sounds bored. I have never watched an episode of Game of Thrones, so I don't know what Sophie Turner's ability as an actress is, but as Jean Grey in both movies, she has been nothing but an utter disappointment.

Mystique is a Mistake: JLaw just gave lifeless speeches, some "change the name to X-Women because the girls do all the saving". Really? From the character that betrayed her family and almost ruined life for mutantkind by going rogue and trying to assassinate world powers? Sounds good, Mystique. It's really disappointing that Jennifer Lawrence did, I think, a really good job in DoFP, to phoning it in Apoc and doing no better in this one. She just sounded like some person giving the generic after school special speech. I was glad she got Logan'd on a piece of wood. And then her be the reason everyone gets their shit straight or motives from? Really? Mystique? I said it in my Apoc review, Jennifer Lawrence just doesn't seem to care. She shouldn't have been brought back for this movie or given as much screen time she was given before her character was killed.

Acting: The acting in this movie was really subpar. The conversations between characters felt so forced, so rushed, so....lifeless. Nothing was allowed a chance to breathe until later in the movie, like it took awhile for them to warm up or something. McAvoy himself included. Evan Peters didn't get much attention, so he didn't do bad. Alexandra Shipp was ok. Sheridan's Cyclops was lifeless again. At least he said "Jean" a lot, if we want to get accurate enough. *Shrugs*. The whole cast was jam packed, but they all seemed like they didn't want to be there.

D' Bari: So the main antagonists in this movie were the D'Bari. You ever hear of them? No? Youz sez noh? Well, they were a (I believe) one time panel about how their planet was destroyed by the Phoenix Force in 1980, which is where the connection to the movie comes in, but were mentioned before that in 1964 in Avengers. With that said, I don't recall they mentioned as the D'Bari, they get shoe-horned into the movie, and all the actors playing them (aside from Jessica Chastain, who is a good actress) were terrible. They all either didn't speak or were monotone as hell, did these horribly over exaggerated runs, floppy arms and shitty fighting. Nothing was said about who they were, unless it was brief and I missed it, what they could do and so on. All that they wanted the Phoenix since it destroyed their planet, and they will destroy Earth and restart their world there. We could've had the Shiar, maybe someone like Cassandra Nova, nah. We get a literal, bottom of the barrel group of aliens, portrayed as crappy stereotype monsters. Their powers weren't explained, Chastain had telekinesis I guess, healing, some telepathy, shapeshifting, and strength. Such a little explanation and a total waste of time with them as a whole.

Fighting: The fighting was terrible, completely lackluster, and such a small scale. Magneto had trouble getting a subway car from the the tunnel, but could almost destroy the planet and float an entire stadium in previous movies. Why? Storm barely did jack and was having trouble with a dude with control over dreadlocks, and I've seen the argument, "there wuz ppl around", nothing was said so keep the excuses to yourself. Selene looked terrible, and just reminded me of the spike chick in the Last Stand. Cyclops missed a slow floating Magneto going over a bus or something from 10 feet away. The train fight was, again, just boring. Magneto had the best moments, but just completely forgettable. This movie had the weakest fight scenes in any of the movies. The Phoenix itself was such a low scale thing too, it was disappointing.

Nightcrawler Went Full Azazel: It was kind of cool to see Nightcrawler go nuts, like stabbing these guys through the neck with his tail kind of nuts, but Kodi McPhee is just so cringey as Nightcrawler. He kind of got away with it in Apoc for being younger, but he just looked so awkward in this movie. Oh, and what set him off to go nuts? A soldier getting hurt, one that was attacking them, kidnapping and imprisoning his friends. It wasn't Magneto that did it, Jean going Dark Phoenix-lite, Hank joining Magneto, Mystique dying. No, it was the soldier that already did a bunch of crap to him and his friends. He had nothing on X-2 Kurt at all, that scene is still one of the best.

CGI: I will say, the visuals at times, particularly the space scenes, looked like cheap scifi movies. Again, lazy.

In Conclusion:

I knew this movie wasn't going to be the best. I didn't expect too much at all, to be honest, but I went with the benefit of the doubt and I have to say, it was garbage. Lazy writing. Lazy acting. Poor CGI. Weak villains. Waste of potential. Sophie Turner CANNOT lead a movie right now. It sucks that this is the last movie we have Fassbender and McAvoy in their respective roles, and this is how that ends. This movie could've been better than Apoc, which I didn't think was even that bad. I gave it a 6. This was worse than that. This was worse than Last Stand and I will say worse than Origins.

Final Verdict: 2/10