Movie Review: Dark Phoenix

Dark Phoenix

Director: Simon Kinberg

Starring: James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Sophie Turner, Tye Sheridan, Alexandra Shipp, Evan Peters, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Jessica Chastain

Rating: PG-13

Runtime: 113 minutes

As most of you know by now, Disney has acquired 20^th Century Fox, which in turn means that the X-Men property is now in the hands of Marvel Studios. While this is potentially great news for the future of the X-Men franchise, for now, the idea of seeing mutants in the MCU is a far-off concept that won’t manifest for a few years at the least. And until that time comes, we will have Fox’s X-legacy to consider and remember. So, true believers, sit yourselves down, grab a snack, and allow me to tell you all about 20^th Century Fox’s last hoorah with the X-Men property: Dark Phoenix. Spoiler alert for this review: it’s not a happy ending.

Due to Days of Future Past erasing the events of 2006’s The Last Stand, Dark Phoenix has now become the canonical appearance of the Phoenix Force in 20th Century Fox’s X-Men timeline. In this retelling of the story, the X-Men are beloved heroes of the people because of their actions in Apocalypse. Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy), who now has a direct line to the President of the United States, responds to a distress signal from the space shuttle Endeavour. Led by Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence) and Beast (Nicholas Hoult), the team of Cyclops, Jean Grey, Nightcrawler, Storm, and Quicksilver (Tye Sheridan, Sophie Turner, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Alexandra Shipp, and Evan Peters respectively) save the astronaut crew aboard their wrecked ship but in the process Jean absorbs the solar flare-like “force” that damaged Endeavour initially.

Where do I begin with this movie? If I say I enjoyed it more than The Last Stand, does that really mean anything? Let’s just start with the plot. With a runtime close to two hours, this movie feels incredibly rushed. Each plot-point is introduced, explored at a surface level, and then they move on. Because of this, lots of scenes have little to no emotional impact on the viewer. There is a major death in the movie, but because of how quickly events go by, the impact is so minimal. Characters feel like they change on a dime, and multiple characters go through drastic changes in personality throughout the film with seemingly little motivation given behind the changes. Not to mention this quick pace gives no time for the antagonists of the film to flesh out any character whatsoever, so all conflict concerning them is boring and hollow.

Besides the pacing, the script itself is written horribly. The dialogue feels like it’s from an X-Men movie released ten years ago, with lines ranging from laughably bad to downright cringe-worthy (looking at you, Jen). The plot itself is pretty uninspired, with the crux of the film coming down to “aliens are here to take back weird power from humans who accidentally obtain it”. While something like this could probably work with better writing, here it’s so bare-bones and uninteresting that I found myself genuinely bored when I wasn’t laughing at horribly misdirected scenes.

Beyond the bad script, the acting isn’t much better. Fassbender and McAvoy carry the movie with their performances, but even they are phoning it in a lot of the time. Sophie Turner, someone I normally really enjoy, was between okay and bad here. She slips into her natural accent on more than one occasion, and most of the movie consists of her either crying or being angry, both of which she doesn’t convey all that convincingly. Jessica Chastain, another seasoned veteran in the acting world, has all of nothing to work with here so her performance is as stiff and bland as her character was written. Nicholas Hoult works fine with what he’s given but he didn’t impress me at all, and Jennifer Lawrence looked like she was counting down the minutes until her last scene every time she showed up.

There are a few decent scenes of action but to me, the CGI flipped so often from passable to terrible that most of the shots that could have been cool looked more like a Youtube video than a feature film. Nightcrawler’s mutant effect looked cool and the Phoenix Force effect looked interesting most of the time, but things like Storm’s lighting and Cyclop’s beam looked really fake. Of course, we all know it’s fake, but it really takes me out of the movie when I’m aware the entire time of just how staged everything is.

I don’t like speaking this negatively about any film, but Dark Phoenix simply had nothing for me. The bland story, pitiful acting, and uninteresting effects do not a good movie make. Hopefully, the MCU will give us another great X-Men film in a few years. Until then, I’ll just rewatch Logan for the 10th time and remember 20th Century Fox’s legacy in a positive light.