Dark Phoenix marks the final installment in Fox’s X-Men franchise (not counting the spinoff movie, New Mutants, which has been pushed back to a release date of next year), now that they've been bought out by Disney. The film also marks the second attempt at telling the iconic comic book story “The Dark Phoenix Saga,” after 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand. The film puts Jean Grey, played by Sophie Turner, at the forefront, as she absorbs a mysterious solar flare-like energy during a rescue mission in space, bringing to light some new dark powers that pit her against her fellow X-Men.
The film was noted for being more of a faithful adaptation to the comics, unlike The Last Stand, which, while nowhere near as bad as everyone makes it out to be, was bogged down by cramming in way too many new characters and side stories, and sometimes tossed the Phoenix material to the side or took many liberties with the source material. This strictly focuses on the plight of Jean Grey, which makes it all the more frustrating how such little is really known about her by the movie’s end.
In terms of character development, not much is really known about this newer incarnation of Jean other than her powers. The movie takes one scenario and puts it on repeat throughout the entire movie. Jean is constantly seen crying or pacing around asking herself, “Why is this happening to me?” but beyond that, that’s about as complex as she gets. The film doesn’t really show her conflicting personalities trying to fight for dominance, or show her attempting to harness her new powers while maintaining her life in Xavier’s school.
Jean is more of a Jekyll and Hyde figure here, abruptly switching from her Phoenix persona (which is never even acknowledged by name), and her Jean persona. In between, there will be the occasional ten second monologue where she cries about her situation, but doesn’t really do much to control it. She’s mainly a one-note character, despite being the primary focus. And Sophie Turner’s lackluster performance doesn’t do her any favors here. Much of her time on screen is made up of over-the-top crying and angry outbursts, which come off more as forced and an excessive attempt at gaining the audience’s sympathy.
All the while, Jean is being manipulated by a mysterious alien, played by Jessica Chastain, who plays this “devil on the shoulder” type role where she goes to coerce Jean to unleash her powers. Chastain is a major part of this movie, though like Jean, not much is really revealed about her throughout this movie. Her motivations aren't given the most clarity, and it’s difficult to even recall her name without looking it up, as it’s stated maybe once during the entire movie. She lacks any sort of distinct personality, and in a way feels more like an after-thought, which is a shame because Chastain’s a great actress, and she’s horribly underused here.
Everyone else in the movie barely even acknowledges that Chastain is part of an alien race and that she, along with Jean’s powers, can mean Earth-shattering consequences. While the idea behind this story is that it’s more of a personal tale for the X-Men, it’s still dealing with elements that could mean huge consequences, and the movie fails to make note of it. The stakes never feel high here, feeling more of a build up to something greater, and then just stopping before taking things to the extreme.
The energy throughout this movie often feels dull and bland, full of static shots of characters engaged in soap opera-like arguing. Most of the dialogue is made up generic platitudes, where characters will dish out every cliched statement in the book. A lot of this movie is extremely exposition heavy, with many of the characters stating how they feel rather than visually expressing it. When someone has a realization, they loudly proclaim it, and when they feel a certain way towards someone else, they immediately get overly confrontational and accusatory, without there being any sort of organic lead-in.
And even when it comes to how certain characters feel, the movie botches their motivations, with a third act that, while exciting, causes the movie to take an abrupt change of pace. The film underwent some notorious re-shoots for its final act, due to it feeling too similar to some of the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies. This paves the way for a solid action sequence that is easily one of the better parts of the movie, after sitting through an hour and a half of disagreements and arguing.
However, while most of the movie was building up to head in one direction, the ending abruptly tosses all that to the side with little explanation. And there’s even a brief dialogue exchange where one character outright acknowledges many of the other characters’ sudden change in heart. However, the reasoning for why the new direction is summed up in one line and the film moves on. Not only does this feel like lazy writing, it also renders much of what came beforehand totally useless. While the third act that was shown in theaters may have been more exciting, at the very least, the original ending would have made for a more cohesive story, as it would have given the characters consistency.
Also inconsistent in this movie is the timeline. The movie takes place in 1992, thirty years since the events of X-Men: First Class. However, none of the characters from that movie seemed to have aged at all, nor do any of the other characters who are introduced in subsequent films that take place in the decades in between. While their appearances are altered slightly, they all maintain their exact appearance as they did when they were first seen in either the 1960’s, 1970's, or 1980’s. Taking place only eight years before the events of the original X-Men movie, not only do the characters not appear to resemble anything close to how they’re meant to appear in that first movie, which cause this once beloved series to become a muddled, confusing narrative.
The only real positive in this movie is some of the acting. While as mentioned, Turner comes off as hokey and Chastain is totally underused, James McAvoy ultimately shines in this movie. While Xavier isn’t given the greatest character development himself, McAvoy is still able to make the most out of the material, and still gives some great delivery that makes the performance engaging to watch, even if he’s spouting subpar dialogue. The same can be said for Nicholas Hoult, who’s given a lot of hokey dialogue to deal with, but manages to give it all he's got with how he delivers them.
Similarly, Michael Fassbender once again does a great job as Magneto, with some really great facial expressions that convey some of the more emotional moments in the movie, despite the fact that his character winds up having some of the biggest inconsistencies. Fassbender does seem to be a bit more disinterested this time around than in his other X-Men outings, at this point ready to move on. However, it goes to show how natural his screen presence is, as even when he doesn’t care so much for the material, he’s still hard to dislike.
Jennifer Lawrence is similarly another cast member who looks like she’s had enough at this point, and her performance conveys more so someone who's really trying to just push through this film and get things over with. While she gets in some solid moments, and is also someone who’s ultimately difficult to not enjoy whenever she’s on screen because of her likable screen presence, she ultimately feels like she’s rushing through most of her dialogue, with some of her exchanges feeling more forced than completely emotional.
Dark Phoenix marks the end of an era, though unfortunately not on the high note it deserved. While it does have some solid performances, its characters are extremely underdeveloped, with the film squandering its potential to tell a highly complex, layered storyline. Instead, it subjects the audience to two hours of bland, repetitive arguments, an underwhelming conflict, unclear motivations, and an ending that, while visually more appealing than the rest of the movie, marks an abrupt change of pace that renders many of the scenes that came before it totally pointless. This is unfortunately an anticlimactic ending to a once beloved film series.
Recommendation: Avoid It
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