TAS Reviews: Dark Phoenix

With this being my 300th blog post, I wanted nothing more than to come on here and tell you all how Dark Phoenix surpassed my expectations and ended up being surprisingly good. Unfortunately, this isn't the case, and instead of praising this movie for surpassing my expectations, I need to spend my 300th blog post explaining to you why and how this movie is so terrible. So terrible, in fact, that it made me think a thought I never expected to think: "I wish I was watching Venom instead."

Before I get into explaining why this is such a terrible movie, let's talk about the positives. Because this movie, like almost any other, has it's strengths, and it's only fair to address them.

Dark Phoenix begins surprisingly well. So much so, that I couldn't help but think to myself: "did the critics watch a different movie?! Sure, this is nothing spectacular, but I'm actually having a pretty fun time!" A major concern for a lot of people going into this movie was the guy behind the directorial chair: 1st-time director Simon Kinberg, producer and writer of The Last Stand and Days of Future Past.

Every director needs a first movie, but generally, it's good for 1st time directors to cut their teeth into something smaller in scale before jumping into the blockbuster landscape. To my surprise, within the first 20 minutes or so of Dark Phoenix, Kinberg delivers a set-piece set in space that is comparable to Interstellar if it had superheroes in it. The entire thing had a very raw aesthetic which felt surprisingly visceral and real, especially for a blockbuster movie that utilises CGI as much as this one.

It's this 1st sequence that allows the X-Men to most shine as a team: demonstrating how each member contributes to the ensemble with their own set of abilities, and displaying the team-dynamic better than anywhere else in this film. The strength of the action carries throughout the rest of the movie, with Kinberg bringing to life the powers of the mutants with stellar, colourful visual effects. There's a scene where Jean Grey gets to tap into the full capacity of her strength and, lay waste to a bunch of people, and it is genuinely stellar to watch from a visual standpoint.

At one point in the movie, Magneto says "you're always sorry, Charles. And there's always a speech. And nobody cares anymore." Reviewing Dark Phoenix almost feels like cheating, because with that line, Magneto summed up it's most cardinal sin.

It just doesn't make you care. It doesn't get you to care about the characters or the conflict. It doesn't get you invested in the story on an emotional-level, and Fox has no one to blame but themselves for this. The franchise had a strong-start with X-Men and X2, but by the time The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine both came out, it became hard to care for the franchise, and the continuity had become so muddled and inconsistent, it became hard to invest in this franchise as a streamlined narrative.

Matthew Vaughn threw them a life-line with First Class, and all of a sudden, we were invested again, and within the span of 2 films (DOFP and Apocalypse) Fox managed to tarnish any investment I had in the franchise. Let me explain. DoFP, on it's own, was a solid film. In fact, I'd argue the movie on it's own, is genuinely great! However, the idea to make DoFP the 2ndin the trilogy, as opposed to the 3rd, as originally intended by Matthew Vaughn, proved a bad idea in the long run.

By the time Apocalypse ended, we'd seen Magneto redeem himself 2 times in this trilogy, and a whooping 3 times throughout the series total, we'd seen Mystique struggle to accept herself, learn to accept herself, struggle to accept herself again and learn to accept herself... again, and going into Dark Phoenix, she still struggles to accept herself... again, reverting to her original form in front of the younger students at the School For Gifted Youngsters. As if that wasn't bad enough, Apocalypse introduced a cast of new, younger mutants such as Sophie Turner's Jean Grey and Tye Sheridan's Cyclops. That movie barely got us attached into this characters, and we're thrown into Dark Phoenix, which focuses extensively on them and feels like a 3rd film for a group of characters weren't barely gotten to know. It results in a movie which suffers profoundly from how botched the lead-up to it was, and it's impossible to care about anything, and even harder to think any thoughts other than "god, how did this series take such a nosedive from First Class?"

This movie focuses a lot on the inner-turmoil of Jean, so it stands to reason that the actress playing this role will be a major determining factor in the quality of the movie. Between Apocalypse and this movie, Sophie Turner has proved to be terrible casting for Jean. Perhaps her casting might've been more effective had Fox let Sophie retain her English accent, but watching her blunder through the script in her awkward American accent and stilted delivery is genuinely uncomfortable to watch.

Tye Sheridan's Cyclops performance does not fare better, substituting good acting with the decision to alternate between an obnoxiously loud, over-expressive tone, and whispering the rest of his lines. In both these films, Cyclops feels less like a character, and more of a caricature of James Marster's already thin-veiled portrayal of Cyclops, with an added element of obnoxiousness and teen angst.

As for the rest of the new kids, Kodi Smit McPhee's Nightcrawler gets some time to shine and put his powers to good use, whereas Evan Peters's Quicksilver disappears for a vast-majority of the film with no solid explanation, and than reappears at the tale end of the movie. If there was a reason for his mid-film exist, it must've been a "blink or you'll miss it moment" because I didn't see anything.

Last, but not least, McAvoy's Xavier and Fassbender's Magneto, inarguably the leads of this First Class quadrilogy. Both deliver predictably good performances, but the writing does the characters an absolute disservice. Gone is the Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X subtext. For a movie that is the conclusion to the X-Men series, these two, whose conflict has been arguably the centrepiece of the X-Men franchise, don't do much besides bicker a little with each other. It was genuinely saddening to see the compelling dynamic between these two which was built on emotion and ideological difference, be diminished into a scene or two of back-and-forth banter.

This movie, as Simon Kinberg has described it, was intended to be the finale of the X-Men franchise. And although a lot of people are tempted to argue "he's only saying that now because Disney bought Fox" but once you watch the movie, I think it's pretty obvious based on certain story decisions that Kinberg knew he was making the conclusion to the franchise as we know it.

But as a conclusion, it is utterly unsatisfying. It's difficult to get into without spoiling anything, so all I'll say is, whereas a movie like Endgame crafted scenes such as Tony's sacrifice, and Steve staying in the past to live the live he always wanted, which intended to deliver the emotional resolution to two long-running characters, there is none of that here.

No attempt to deliver on an emotionally satisfying conclusion to the journeys of Xavier and Erik leading up to this point. They just play chess together, and then the screen fades to black. It is the epitome of cheap fan-service without an understanding of how to deliver on a logical, earned conclusion to two distinct yet parallel character arcs.

I could go on about the disappointingly mediocre soundtrack from the otherwise excellent Hans Zimmer, or the fact we only get roughly ten-minutes of Jean being the baddie, but all of these things could've been forgiven, had Simon Kinberg just delivered on a compelling, emotionally satisfying story, something he wasn't able to do. There are attempts at dramatic conflict in this film, but all of them feel forced, unearned and borderline laughable.

Such as a cringe-worthy line from Mystique to Xavier about how she can't remember the last time Xavier himself has been the one to sacrifice something to save the day (Really? You can't understand why the wheelchair bound dude isn't going out there and putting his life on the line?!) Or an out-of-place line about why Xavier should change the name to X-Women because "the women are always saving the men." Or a forced argument between Hank McCoy and Xavier which feels utterly unearned, mandated and downright laughable in it's melodrama.

Conclusion

The X-Men franchise started in 2000 with Bryan Singer's X-Men, a movie which redefined the superhero genre. This franchise ends in 2019 - 19 years later, and 7 mainline X-Men movies. It ends in not a bang, or a victory lap. Instead, it ends on a whimper: a footnote at best.

Score: 3/10.