Random Movie Review - X-Men: Dark Phoenix

 

 "Well it worked for Deadpool so why not do another take on this story" says Fox. So between watching The Last Stand and this film, I found time to finally read the actual story that both this and that film were based on (though The Last Stand was an attempt at adapting two X-Men stories including Dark Phoenix). To be honest I can now see why the last film failed. Dark Phoenix as beloved as it is, it's a very complicated and complex story. Obviously we all know its about one of the X-Men realizing her true potential and the newfound power that she receives which slowly makes her go bad. Sounds simple when put like that, but Dark Phoenix is far from being a simple story. But I guess with Days of Future Past cancelling out The Last Stand and Fox's risk of making a film about Deadpool with Ryan Reynolds reprising the role from Origins: Wolverine paying off, I guess they felt doing another attempt at Dark Phoenix was worth doing. I mean how bad can another attempt possibly be and would fans be willing to forgive what happened in the past? Well who knows. Personally I feel that Logan ended the film series perfectly (excluding Deadpool 2 which is in its own series despite being an X-Men character originally). But I guess Fox were not ready to finish just yet until Disney bought their film and TV divisions and said you can do two more but that's it (the other film being New Mutants). So let's see if this film was worth it (though I still say Logan ended it perfectly):

Starting in 1975 we get a little origin story on Jean Grey (reprised by Sophie Turner) as to how she got her powers and how she became part of the X-Men. We then move to 1992 in which Xavier (reprised by James McAvoy) has managed to secure safety for all mutantkind regardless of their allegiance alongside the US government. The president (played by Brian d'Arcy James) has Xavier send a group up into space in which they are tasked with saving the crew of the space shuttle Endeavour from the destruction of the shuttle due to solar flare energy. The mission goes well, but Jean slowly starts to get corrupted from the energy and starts questioning what she is, who she is and whether the X-Men can be trusted any more to look after her. Meanwhile, some aliens invade Earth and begin to take human bodies in an attempt to find Jean and take control of her.

I have mixed feelings about this film. First of all, yes it's not a good film. Far from it. The actors do the best job they can and the music is OK too. Visuals aren't too bad and kudos to the filmmakers for actually making it be based on one story this time instead of several (which was the case with The Last Stand). But for the final main X-Men film, there's just so many problems with it that it can't really be justified as the send-off we were hoping for. Its bland, too serious to the point that the characters known for their comic relief are serious and it just ret-cons the whole "humans afraid of mutants" thing that the whole film franchise has been doing to death. It probably doesn't deserve all the hate that it got because its actually got some good things about it. But with another poorly executed attempt at the beloved but complex story as well as being the last main film, we deserve better. They should have stopped at Logan. That's all I can say. Watch it if you want, but don't expect it to be all that it's cracked up to be. 5/10