X-Men: Dark Phoenix Review

The Gist:

X-Men: Dark Phoenix is the final entry into Fox’s X-Men movie series, before Disney wrestled them to the ground and pried the franchise out of their fingers, is a second attempt at adapting the Dark Phoenix Saga.

Different cast, different timeline, same writer.

Can you spot their deliberate mistake?

The Review:

Fittingly, this movie ends with a literal train-wreck; because there is no better way to sum up how Fox took their successful reinvigoration of the X-Men movies and drove it straight into the ground.

To be fair, some of the problems are those that were introduced in X:Men: Apocalypse, but Phoenix just takes those problems and runs with them. Pretty much the only parts worthy of praise are Fassbender and McAvoy’s performances, but that’s largely to be expected by this point. As far as the bad stuff goes, I could write an entire essay on it, but I’ll be concise about it. I’ll broadly avoid specific plot details, but there’ll also be one or two spoilers for those of you lucky enough to have not seen this movie yet.

One of the opening themes of the movie is supposed to be that Xavier’s ego is starting to grow a bit too big and that all of the problems of the movie are triggered by him. Raven/Mystique lambasts him for sending the X-Men into dangerous missions for the sake of PR. It was apparently also terrible that he kept the fact that Jean’s father was still alive, and now hated her, a secret. Of course, given the utter disaster that is unleashed when she does find out, you can’t help but feel that it was actually a smart play. The X-Men get sent on a space mission to rescue some astronauts and Jean almost dies because Prof. X insists on them not leaving anyone behind. This awakens the Phoenix force inside of Jean and kicks off the plot. While you can understand Mystique being angry that one of the team almost died, the team is made up of adults in their early twenties at youngest and no one was press-ganged into it. This makes her whole argument that Xavier is endangering ‘kids’ for his ego seem a bit fragile. Especially when it’s pointed out that the ‘PR’ that Xavier is so ‘obsessed’ with is the reason mutants aren’t being hunted down the way they were two decades previously.

So, the whole ‘Xavier’s ego causing problems’ falls flat as he largely comes off as doing the right thing with a few missteps in the execution. The is compounded by the fact that the second half of the movie involves things getting steadily worse until people start listening to Xavier again.

So, we have a movie where the plot as stated by dialogue is actually contradicted by the plot as shown by actual events. None of this helped by the fact that the main cast is split into two camps. The ones like Storm and Quicksilver, who have no character arcs of their own and exist to just fill out the action scenes. The other camp is characters who do have character arcs… that are dull and one dimensional at best and outright nonsensical at worst. For the sake of the slice of cake that is sitting in my fridge just begging for me to make some time for it, I’ll keep this brief by focusing on the three worst offenders.

Since I’ve already brought her up, Mystique is a character who had been absolutely trashed by bad writing since Apocalypse. In First Class, they took the relatively straight forward villain from the original movies and gave her depth by showing her journey from a well-meaning and heroic young woman to an immoral and embittered mutant supremacist. Days of Future Past added to that depth by showing that, even at this point, she wasn’t beyond redemption when the altered course of events sees her listen to her conscience and remain on the right side of history.

Then Fox decided that feminism was something they could try to squeeze some money out of. Unfortunately, they apparently don’t understand what feminism actually is. And so, Apocalypse saw Mystique’s strong, deep and complex character retooled into a morally perfect Mary Sue who everyone worships and whose previous failures and crimes are never brought up again. Dark Phoenix takes this characterisation and doubles down on it.

Apocalypse also did a number on Hank ‘Beast’ McCoy, whose character was reduced to two bullet points; loyal to Xavier and his cause and in love with Mystique. Even after she deliberately uses his feelings for her to manipulate him in Future Past, nothing comes of it in later movies.

Finally, we have Magneto, a man who was literally the most wanted criminal in the world in the previous movie. Dark Phoenix shows that he is somehow no longer a wanted man and the US government even gave him land to start his own mutant nation. The reveal of this, saw the movie rewound several times to make sure I hadn’t somehow misheard what they’d said. Even if Xavier had somehow managed to cover up that Magneto was on Apocalypse’s side until the last second (he generated worldwide magnetic fields so good luck with that), there’s no way this happens. Even if you accept that they’d pardon him, there’s no way any government is giving the symbol of the mutant supremacist movement the tools he needs to recruit a new army of sympathisers to his cause.

Yet it isn’t long before he decides to endanger all the mutants under his care by rampaging through New York to kill another mutant over a personal vendetta; Classic Magneto to be sure, but he’s still supposed to be a sympathetic character somehow? There are no consequences to this either. At the end of the movie, he and Xavier are still friends and the US government apparently decides that everyone makes mistakes and presses no charges.

The Verdict:

The swansong of Fox-brand X-Men is the dying sob of a victim that has suffered long enough. An inconsistent, rushed plot with awful characterisation. Anything in it worthy of praise (namely Fassbender and McAvoy’s performances) is a holdover from the earlier, better movies.  Perhaps, more disappointingly, this is another lacklustre attempt to bring one of the most popular comic arcs to the big screen.