Dark Phoenix

“When I lose control, bad things happen to people I love. But it feels good. “

Jean Grey

• Director: Simon Kinberg
• Studio: 20th Century Fox
• Rating: PG-13
• Runtime: 1h 54m
• End-Credits Scene: No

I’ll come right out at the beginning of this review and admit, I have not been the biggest fan of the X-Men series. Aside from X2, First Class, and Days of Future Past, I haven’t liked most of these movies. Logan and Deadpool 2 are the only two I really loved, but it’s kind of iffy how those take place in the main story line of this series, I feel they’re more of spin-offs. Maybe I’ve been spoiled too much by the MCU also existing and being as great as it is, but it seems the only consistency of this franchise is inconsistency, hardly any of the stories ever line up, and there hasn’t really ever seem to have been a clear direction that this franchise wanted to go in. I almost didn’t see this movie in theaters at all, but I was curious how they were going to end it due to the Disney/Fox merger and knowing this was going to be the last in the franchise. Did this offer an impressive finale to a franchise 19 years in the making? Not really, but I wasn’t insanely disappointed either, but going into this film with almost rock-bottom expectations probably aided in that.

This movie starts off pretty good, I thoroughly enjoyed the first 20 or 30 minutes and it gave me hope for the rest of the movie. The action set pieces, especially one in the third act, were really well executed and shot and I was fully on board for those moments. Unfortunately I couldn’t find myself to really care for any of the characters minus Magneto because Michael Fassbender is in my opinion the best part of the rebooted X-Men series, but even he wasn’t anything spectacular in this one. It would start to explore ideas that were fairly interesting but then it would either drop them or wrap up the thread very quickly. As for it being the finale of this series, it felt very anticlimactic and it ended pretty abruptly. I was also disappointed how quickly this ended because it is the last time we’ll see these versions of the characters, and it spent no time giving them a sendoff. It’s a shame this series couldn’t have left off on a film comparable to Days of Future Past. A good amount of the complaints I think can be blamed on the extensive reshoots and production issues this movie had. I’m fairly certain that New Mutants will have the same issues if that one ever comes out.

Overall I didn’t fully hate this movie like I was expecting to, and it’s not my least favorite in the X-Men series (that award goes to The Last Stand and X-Men Origins: Wolverine), but I won’t be picking this up for home release or probably ever going to watch it again. I’m excited to see what Disney does with these characters in a few years and how they’ll be introduced into the greater MCU now that they have acquired the rights to them, The Fantastic Four, and several others, but I hope they give it a few years to let this franchise lay to rest for a while before reviving it. I’m going to give Dark Phoenix a 4.5/10, again it’s a shame to see such a long lasting series go out on a low note, but hopefully in a few years we’ll see these characters and stories handled correctly. What did you think of Dark Phoenix, did you feel confident about how it ended or do you wish it could’ve gone out better? Let me know in the comments below!