DARK PHOENIX by Urizen

   X-Men….oh X-men…you tried. You really did. At least I assume you tried.  Sometimes I have to really wonder though. To simply cut to the chase with this one, is X-Men: Dark Phoenix the worst X-men movie of all time? No. Not even close.  Is it a good movie though? Still no. It certainly isn't the bang Fox was probably wanting this series to end on either.  I think the most accurate way to describe this movie is when a parent goes to their child and says “I’m not mad.  I'm just disappointed.”

   Dark Phoenix is another telling of the Phoenix saga with, sadly, some of the same mistakes as Last Stand and with new ones thrown in. It deals with Jean Grey (played by Sophie Turner), coming into contact with a solar flare while the X-men are dealing with a rescue mission in space.  The supposed flare should have killed her but instead it appears she absorbs it. While back on Earth, Scott Summers (Tye Sheridan) tells her that because of her coming out of that, the other kids have nicknamed her The Phoenix. Ugh. As Jean is dealing with her new and increased powers that have come on due to her exposure to the flare, a group of aliens called the Shi'ar appear on Earth. They take on the form of humans (certainly not at all like the Skrulls …) and quickly get to work trying to find Jean.

  Now, with this all going on, we also have a plot about how Xavier (James McAvoy), put all of these mental blocks in Jean to hide things from her, leading everyone to not trust him. Combine that with him having such a desire for mutants to be seen in a good light, he would willingly sacrifice his students to save one human, it really paints him in a bad light for this movie. All things to think about and that I will get back to.

   While not the best sounding plot ever, it is a hopeful one. Having space and the Shi'ar be involved, plus including this seemingly cosmic origin for the Phoenix Force makes it seem like this may be a bit more faithful. We may finally be getting a good adaptation of the famous story. Sadly that is not true. It is a good looking adaptation. It is, at times, a well acted adaptation. It most certainly is not a well written, accurate adaptation of the comic though.

   I can't express how disappointing this is. I think most people can agree that when First Class came out, we thought that this was the start of something good. This could be the X-men we were waiting for. Instead we got a series that has gone steadily downhill with a timeline that doesn’t make any sense, characters not aging, and characters flip flopping and not staying true to the core of the character. Given this was the last movie though, I thought we were done with that. I thought things would get wrapped up nicely. We would go out on a strong film and get a truly epic experience. Instead we get the Last Stand with some alterations. Instead of Dark Phoenix we get the Slightly Gray Phoenix .

   Let me take a minute to explain things that I did enjoy with this film, because as many problems as I have, there are things I did like. As I said, not the worst X-men movie in my opinion. The visual effects for this are all pretty good. Nothing really stands out to me as a time that didn’t look good. Also the acting, when good, was really good. One stand out for me is Tye Sheridan as Scott Summers. Given we have only had a movie and a half with him, I prefer him much more than James Marsden. He stays true enough to the character without being a jerk and does a great job portraying emotions considering we can’t see his eyes.  One problem with Cyclops is that a lot of conveying emotion is in the eyes. Scott always has his covered which makes it hard to portray that. Sheridan does a great job with that though. You never have to wonder how he is feeling in a situation,  certain brow movements give it away. It was refreshing. Otherwise, I also really liked the action.  You got great uses of powers, with certain characters really getting their moments to shine.

   Okay, so now for the villains. In Dark Phoenix, we have the Shi’ar, a group of aliens led by Vuk (Jessica Chastain). Remember when I said the visual effects were mostly really good? This is one of those few exceptions. Cleverly, they hide the Shi'ar’s alien forms in the dark to cover the bad CGI. Unfortunately though you can see just enough to tell that they look like Groot and the aliens from Signs had a baby. There is nothing too unique or exciting about their appearance and they move like aliens for a low budget cable television show. It isn’t great.

   We never get to learn too much about the Shi'ar which may have helped some. We know the planet they are from got killed by the Phoenix Force, which is just called The Force in this. They are apparently chasing after it for this reason and are after Jean. Seemingly they somewhere along the way decide that they want to destroy humans and take over Earth to have as their new planet. It is hard to care about any of them when the movie doesn’t even seem to. I think we get Vuk’s name mentioned only during one scene and maybe Shi'ar mentioned during one scene. I’m honestly surprised I can even slightly remember those names. If the characters and history were fleshed out a little more then maybe it would be okay, but they really aren’t. Their powers are even a bit unclear. One minute they are putting their hands up to someone’s stomach and it like twists it around, killing them, then the next they are just getting tossed aside like nothing. There is no consistency.

   Speaking of consistency, one thing that has bugged me throughout this whole series has been the lack of consistency when it comes to these characters. Sadly that continues in this movie. We have Mystique who has gone from good to bad back to good back to kind of bad, over to a leader of the X-men to now wanting out of it all.  Mutants as a whole have gone from being unknown to hated to celebrities and heroes and back to being hated and feared after the Jean Gray incident. Slight minor spoiler, they never really address that again. It ties into the final action piece of the movie, but otherwise as far as I know, mutants are still hated and feared again. There was talk of internment camps for mutants at one point. For all I know, that could be going on.

    Xavier also suffers with this a lot. He went from someone who just wanted mutants safe and protected, to have them accepted, to being a character who was willing to throw away his students' lives to save humans if it kept them in the same position. His ego came first as he was going to all of these events and parties while meanwhile caring less and less about the well being of the other mutants. On the flip side of this, we have Erik. Now Magneto has been shown to sacrifice his people multiple times, even going as far as to leave Mystique behind in one of the original films. While he has flip flopped from good to evil to an almost in between in these movies, I have still really enjoyed his character probably partly due to Michael Fassbender’s performance. In Dark Phoenix, Eric is now living on an island that was apparently given to him by the government for him and other mutants to live on. Highly implied to be Genosha, but never confirmed, because this movie just doesn’t care enough. Erik is sort of a caretaker there, he watches out for this group of mutants (none of them ever get named so…cool?), and throughout the film honestly is shown to care more about the mutants than Xavier. It doesn’t make sense.

   One thing I will say is they seemed to be consistent with the core groups mutant abilities. The only thing I had a problem with is Jean. She has a bit of a Last Stand thing going on where Xavier put mental blocks on her, but not due to her powers. This time it is apparently due to wanting to keep some memories from Jean. When she gets the Phoenix Force, her power does grow substantially, the problem is we never hear what it can do. At one point Vuk says that it could give her power to destroy and recreate the world basically, but it is all kept pretty vague. Her psychic powers seem stronger and she can seemingly incinerate people, but we don’t know the extent. There is a lot of times where it is better to show and not tell. Unfortunately when you are doing not much of either it creates real problems.

   With this problem, it leads to my other issue. While not confirmed, it seems like Jean used the Phoenix Force in Apocalypse. Did she always have it? Did she just have a connection to it and it became drawn to her? Considering none of the X-men have really aged in 30 years or so, it shows these movies have not exactly cared about continuity.

    I mentioned before that the writing was a bit of an issue. At times it seemed fine, but then you get a lot of moments that just make you cringe. You have lines like “the women are always saving the men, maybe you should change the name to X-women” and cliché ones such as “Your emotions make you weak.” Everyone in the theater groaned at these lines. Let’s not forget also that the soldiers attacking the mutants are wearing arm bands labeled “MCU.” May not have been intentional, but also was not well thought out.

    Sadly this movie leaves many things hanging other than what I mentioned. We never get any closure on Erik being Peter's father. Peter is also hardly even in the movie. I was really looking forward to more on that. We also never get more on that Essex Corp end credit scene from Apocalypse. I also want to know if the Phoenix Force gives the power of wavy hair and red long coats, because that has stayed consistent. I get that at this point, comic accurate X-Men costumes weren’t going to happen, but why do they always put Jean in that coat while she’s Dark Phoenix? These movies frustrate me.

    As you can tell, I don’t think this is a good movie. I enjoyed the fight scenes and seeing Jean go all out, which helped me out a little bit. Over all, while this movie was a disappointment. It was the lack of closure, the lack of a hard hitting, powerful finale and the way these character's arcs end that really lead to disappointment. I wonder if Disney buying out Fox partly hurt this, but I also can’t help but see this as a good thing. Fox, while doing a lot of good for that universe has caused a multitude of problems with the franchise. Marvel studios, while not always being as accurate and while having their issues, they have been far more competent with their properties. I will certainly miss some of these actors, and part of me hates to see it end, but now I can only hope that like a Phoenix, this franchise can rise from the ashes, better than ever in the future under it’s new home.