REVIEW: 'Dark Phoenix' fails to fly
Sophie Turner as Jean Grey in Dark Phoenix, directed by Simon Kinberg.
Here’s what’s really wrong with Dark Phoenix: everyone wants to hate it. At 24 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, it is the worst-rated X-Men film by a significant margin, but that should be nowhere near the truth. Its audience score is 64 percent, representing the biggest gulf between critics and moviegoers in any of the films in the franchise. X-Men: Apocalypse had the same audience score but earned 47 percent with critics, and it’s definitely not twice as better nor noticeably better than Dark Phoenix; in fact, it’s noticeably worse.
The X-Men films suffer from lack of film-to-film coherence and structure, but that’s been a problem with the entire franchise without a Kevin Feige-like overlord. The films range from good (Logan, 93%) to downright awful (X-Men Origins: Wolverine, somehow still 37%), and Dark Phoenix falls firmly somewhere in between. It’s been a roller coaster of a ride (see chart below), and unfortunately for Fox, the franchise doesn’t get the send-off it deserves.
We have placed Marvel on such a higher pedestal that we’ve grown accustomed to believing that any non-Marvel superhero film must be trash, and that was most obvious with the overwhelmingly positive reception to the news that the X-Men would be folded into the MCU following Dark Phoenix. Despite some strong performances and two excellent action sequences, Dark Phoenix never really feel like it had a chance. It’s still rife with problems, but it doesn’t deserve to be forgotten.
Tye Sheridan, James McAvoy, Kodi Smit-McPhee, and Alexandra Shipp fill out the team.
Simon Kinberg’s remake of The Last Stand, which he wrote with Zak Penn but had felt unsatisfied with the finished product, suffers from many of the same problems as its predecessor, but it is an improvement overall. Based on the iconic “The Dark Phoenix Saga” series by Chris Claremont in 1980, the story once again focuses on Jean Grey (Sophie Turner), a psychic who is consumed by immense power but loses control and begins to wreak havoc. It is much less of a mess than Brett Ratner’s chaotic and melodramatic version, and it helps that Hans Zimmer’s score is immediately memorable and one of the film’s best ways to increase the tension for a very predictable plot.
Set in 1992, the X-Men are now a government-approved special task force after the defeat of Apocalypse, and their newest mission is to rescue a crew from a space shuttle that was damaged by a solar flare-like energy. The X-Men save the crew, but Jean is exposed to the flare and absorbs all of the energy, and later begins to experience an uncontrollable surge in her powers.
Professor Xavier (James McAvoy) and Erik/Magneto’s (Michael Fassbender) attempts to rein her in fail, and the plot is further complicated by a mysterious alien, Vuk (Jessica Chastain), with ambiguous motivations. (That wasn’t to keep things spoiler-free; I legitimately didn’t understand Vuk’s who, what, when and why). The X-Men’s team leaders, Raven/Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) and Hank/Beast (Nicholas Hoult), serve as proxies for the social commentary that made the comic book so endearing to outsiders, but their conflict is limited to a few lines and a few scenes, and team members Scott/Cyclops (Tye Sheridan), Storm (Alexandra Shipp), Kurt/Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and Quicksilver (Evan Peters) are even more marginalized and primarily used as set pieces.
Michael Fassbender returns as Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto.
This film doesn’t work without Turner and McAvoy turning in solid performances. Turner seems to have borrowed many of the nuances from Game of Thrones, providing convincing shifts between young and impressionable to dark and brooding. McAvoy’s arrogant smugness and Fassbender’s more sympathetic turn also offers up an interesting dynamic; previous films always pitted Fassbender’s unyielding mutants-first worldview against McAvoy’s more harmonious ideal. The rest of the X-Men do a serviceable job, including Lawrence, who can’t shake off the Old Dixie vibe and was woefully miscast as the mysterious, shape-shifting Mystique.
The problem with Dark Phoenix’s ensemble cast is that character motivations have no source or conviction. Hank’s turn from the X-Men’s voice of reason to Magneto’s No. 2 didn’t make sense, and the mysterious alien race offered no further explanation to Jean’s journey or the X-Men universe. Important questions about the X-Men’s moral duties are raised by Raven but never answered. Jean’s power is never fully explained, and the opening prologue destroyed any mysteries to her past.
The film should’ve started with the space shuttle rescue and jumped right into the action, bypassing any sort of unnecessary setup for a well-known franchise. It is perhaps the best opening set up of any X-Men film, but the lack of direction, structure and genuine drama means it ends up going mostly downhill from there.
Dark Phoenix gets two and half stars out of four.
All X-Men films (excluding Deadpool) ranked best to worst:
Logan (2017, Dir: James Mangold)
Proof that character development is still vital to superhuman characters, and a proper farewell to Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine.X2: X-Men United (2003, Dir: Bryan Singer)
Lacking excitement save for the opening Nightcrawler sequence, but well-crafted and taps into the core appeal of X-Men: moral conflict and character development.X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014, Dir: Bryan Singer)
The pinnacle of ensemble X-Men films, and an adventurous and fun excuse to merge the past and present.X-Men (2000, Dir: Bryan Singer)
The one that started it all, grounding it all in reality and kicking off the superhero genre along with Unbreakable.X-Men: First Class (2011, Dir: Matthew Vaughn)
A successful reboot and reinvigoration of the franchise, but hasn’t aged particularly well. Jennifer Lawrence is miscast.The Wolverine (2013, Dir: James Mangold)
An up-and-down adventure with a boring villain and shaky CGI, but also a character study that sets the stage for Logan.Dark Phoenix (2019, Dir: Simon Kinberg)
A slightly improved remake of The Last Stand, but still somehow makes the same mistakes.X-Men: The Last Stand (2006, Dir: Brett Ratner)
It’s aged better than expected, but fails to elevate itself beyond a generic superhero film heavy on CGI and melodrama.X-Men: Apocalypse (2016, Dir: Bryan Singer)
The most bland, low-stakes film despite having the most high-stakes villain in X-Men history. Oliver Isaac was miscast.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009, Dir: Gavin Hood)
The spin-off that was supposed to launch a new series but ended up being a critical failure, though it did gross $460 million worldwide.