One of the most popular stories in comics history, the extended storyline that cemented the X-Men’s place in the late 1970s and early 1980s as Marvel’s new flagship title, was the “Dark Phoenix” saga, which culminated in the death of Phoenix in 1980’s Uncanny X-Men #137. Co-plotted by scripter Chris Claremont and artist John Byrne, the story saw founding member Jean Grey become corrupted by her power, thanks to mental manipulation by the longtime X-villain Mastermind.
This storyline has been adapted several times in screen versions of the X-Men, including once before in the Fox live-action series. The cowriter of that film, Simon Kinberg, took advantage of the time-travel shenanigans of Days of Future Past to take a mulligan on The Last Stand and do it all over again, this time as both writer and director.
The “Dark Phoenix” saga got its start, truly, in the aftermath of the X-Men’s battle against Magneto in his Antarctic base in Uncanny X-Men #112-113 in 1978. In the wake of that battle, the X-Men were separated, each group thinking the other dead. Jean Grey, a.k.a. Phoenix, and Hank McCoy, a.k.a. the Beast, returned to the X-Men’s mansion, sadly informing Professor Charles Xavier that the X-Men were dead. Grey eventually wound up on Muir Isle in Scotland, where she met a man named Jason Wyngarde. She also started having very vivid flashbacks to a life in 18th-century America as a member of the Hellfire Club.
(The rest of the team went to the Savage Land, a prehistoric realm hidden in Antarctica, then sailed into nasty waters and were rescued by a Japanese military ship on radio silence, and then their plane ride home from Japan got diverted to Canada, before finally going home to find the mansion locked up. Apropos of nothing, this is a story that could only work in an age before cell phones…)
Wyngarde turned out to be one of the X-Men’s oldest foes, Mastermind, an illusionist, who was trying to join the modern-day version of the Hellfire Club, a group of mutants dedicated to financial and political power. His “application” was to suborn Phoenix to their ranks, making her think that she was truly in the 1700s and part of that older club. While Phoenix was able to break Mastermind’s hold, the damage was done, and she gave in completely to her power and became Dark Phoenix.
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She destroyed a star, wiping out an entire solar system (one of which had an inhabited planet, D’Bari), and also destroyed a Shi’ar cruiser. After returning to Earth, she fought a psi-war with Xavier, and between Xavier’s own strength, as well as Grey herself fighting against her baser nature, the Professor was able to put psychic barriers on her to limit her powers.
But then the Shi’ar came and sentenced her to death for destroying D’Bari and the ship. The X-Men fought the Shi’ar Imperial Guard and lost—but when she sees Cyclops cut down, Grey loses it, and becomes Phoenix again, finally committing suicide rather than become Dark Phoenix again.
This, by the way, was not the planned ending, as Claremont and Byrne had intended to have Grey instead basically lobotomized, her powers completely removed, making her a normal human. Marvel’s editor-in-chief Jim Shooter insisted that she needed to pay a harsher penalty for wiping out a solar system, and so the character was killed.
Six years later, Marvel created X-Factor. I outlined in the rewatch of Apocalypse exactly why the creation of X-Factor was wrong on so many levels, in part because it did bring Jean Grey back, and absolved of Dark Phoenix’s crimes by making the character of “Phoenix” that we saw in Uncanny X-Men #101-137 an alien entity that took on Jean’s form and memories and personality, with the original Grey in a cocoon in the Atlantic Ocean.
Just as X2 set up the notion of Grey becoming Phoenix in The Last Stand, Apocalypse did likewise for Dark Phoenix. Following the pattern of all the “past” X-movies since 2011’s First Class, this movie again jumped a decade, taking place in 1992 (the year that the X-Men animated series debuted on the FOX network), with an opening flashback to 1975 (the year that the “new X-Men” debuted in Giant-Sized X-Men #1).
Back from Apocalypse are James MacAvoy as Xavier, Michael Fassbender as Magneto, Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique, Sophie Turner as Grey, Tye Sheridan as Cyclops, Nicholas Hoult as the Beast, Alexandra Shipp as Storm, Kodi Smit-McPhee as Nightcrawler, and Evan Peters as Quicksilver.
Kinberg originally had the bad-guy aliens be the shape-changing Skrulls rather than the Shi’ar as they were in the comic. Possibly due to rights issues (the Skrulls appeared in a Marvel Studios movie—one released the same year and also taking place in the 1990s, Captain Marvel), it was changed during post-production and reshoots to the D’Bari, altered from victims to antagonists. Jessica Chastain plays Vuk, their leader, with Ato Essandoh as her second.
Also in the film are two allies of Magneto, Selene Gallio (very loosely based on the ancient sorceress from the comics), played by Kota Eberhardt, and Ariki, played by Andrew Stehlin.
After numerous reshoots and several delays, and after Disney bought 20th Century Fox, the film was finally released in 2019 to lukewarm reviews. It’s likely the swan song of this run of X-films, though The New Mutants is still scheduled for 2020 release. At this point, thanks to the aforementioned purchase, the X-folk are likely to be folded into the Marvel Cinematic Universe moving forward.
“You are not broken”
X-Men: Dark Phoenix
Written and directed by Simon Kinberg
Produced by Simon Kinberg, Hutch Parker, Lauren Shuler-Donner, and Todd Hallowell
Original release date: June 7, 2019
In 1975, eight-year-old Jean Grey is changing the radio station in her parents’ car as they’re driving with her telekinesis without even realizing she’s doing it. She starts hearing the thoughts of her parents and other people on the road. She yells for everyone to be quiet, which has the unintended side effect of putting her mother to sleep. The car careens out of control into a truck. Grey’s parents are killed, but she isn’t hurt at all.
Professor Charles Xavier takes her in. She doesn’t think she deserves to stay in so nice a mansion, as she breaks things, but Xavier promises that if she does, they’ll fix it.
Jump to 1992. In the decade since Apocalypse, the X-Men have become celebrities, complete with a hot-line to the President of the United States. When the space shuttle Endeavour is damaged by what appears to be a solar flare, the X-Men volunteer to save the astronauts—which they do, mostly thanks to Nightcrawler’s teleporting, Quicksilver’s speed, and Grey’s telekinesis. Grey herself is still on the shuttle when the flare strikes, destroying it, though Grey absorbs much of it into herself. Nightcrawler is able to get her back onto the X-jet, and when they land (to a hero’s welcome), she’s surprisingly fine.
Mystique is concerned about how much of the X-Men’s missions are there to aggrandize Xavier. She’s also concerned about the risks they’re taking, as this could just as easily have been a failed mission with Grey dead. Xavier counters that it’s better for them to be hailed as heroes than hunted as freaks. He also reminds her that they’re just one big incident away from being hated again. (That’s probably foreshadowing.)
Xavier goes to D.C. to receive an award, while the kids at the school have a party. At one point during the party (during which Grey is drinking a great deal of liquids, as she’s strangely thirsty), her mental shields collapse and she screams for everyone to be quiet, knocking a lot of things over. Then she herself lapses into unconsciousness.
Sensing this, Xavier cuts the reception short and returns home. Grey has become so powerful that Xavier can’t actually sense her anymore. (This makes absolutely no sense.) He uses Cerebro to amplify his powers, and he’s able to connect to her mind. He senses what she senses, which is so many different minds—including a familiar voice.
Grey leaves the school. Cyclops tries to go with her, but she puts him to sleep so he won’t follow. While Xavier can’t track her, he knows where she’s going: the house where she grew up.
They take the X-jet there, just as Grey confronts her father, who is actually alive. Turns out that her father didn’t want her around anymore, as she was a constant reminder of the death of his wife. He urged Xavier to take her away and tell her that he was dead so he wouldn’t have to see her again.
When the X-Men arrive, Grey fights them, refusing to go back, furious at being lied to all these years. In the fight, local cops are injured, as is Quicksilver, while Grey kills Mystique, casting her aside and impaling her on debris. Devastated at killing her friend, Grey flies away.
Grey goes to Magneto, who lives in a haven for mutants that the government has granted him and any mutant who wishes to take sanctuary there. The U.S. military follows, saying they’re there for Grey, who refuses to go. A fight ensues, and Grey leaves after kicking considerable ass.
The X-Men mourn Mystique. The Beast blames Xavier for killing her, and goes off to Magneto, telling him the one thing Grey left out: that she killed Mystique.
An alien species called the D’Bari kill a bunch of humans and take their forms. They are after the cosmic force that has now possessed Grey, and which was responsible for the solar flare that damaged the Endeavour. They track Grey down and bring her to a mansion in Manhattan.
One of Magneto’s people learn that Grey’s been sighted in New York. Xavier tracks Beast to New York as well, and there’s a fight between the X-Men and Magneto’s people, with Beast now on Magneto’s side.
First Magneto, then Xavier confront Grey. She tosses Magneto aside after destroying his helmet, then Xavier lets her read his mind, and she remembers how much Xavier helped her. Vuk, the leader of the D’Bari, wants the cosmic force so they can rebuild their world, and Grey is willing to give it to her. Too late, the X-Men realize that the D’Bari want to rebuild their world on Earth, killing humanity, and the act of extracting the force will kill Grey. Cyclops, Xavier, and Magneto manage to stop the transfer—but then the U.S. military shows up with a mutant power neutralizing gun and collars that suppress mutant powers. Everyone is captured and put on a train and sent to a containment facility.
Then the D’Bari attack the train and make short work of the troops. The X-Men manage to convince the commander to free them once it’s clear that these aren’t fellow mutants coming to the X-Men’s rescue, but rather nasty-ass shape-changing aliens. The X-Men hold their own against the D’Bari, but Vuk has some of the cosmic force within her now and is much more powerful.
But then Grey frees herself, blowing past the control collar. She makes short work of the D’Bari and flies into orbit with Vuk, never to be seen again.
Xavier renames the school the Jean Grey School for Gifted Youngsters and then takes a leave of absence, leaving the Beast in charge. He goes to Paris, where Magneto tracks him down and challenges him to a game of chess.
“I’m not as evolved as I thought I was”
The biggest problem with adapting the Dark Phoenix storyline in a series of movies is that the effectiveness of the original tale was because Chris Claremont and John Byrne told it slowly as a background subplot for the better part of two years before it kicked into high gear. Also it was effective because it was a character who had, at that point, been a regular in a comic book for seventeen years (on and off).
It’s much harder to make that work when your storytelling space isn’t a monthly comic, but rather a two-hour movie every couple years. There just isn’t time for it to build.
Both times he did it, Simon Kinberg chose to flash back to Jean Grey’s childhood to invent a trauma or an issue that had to be dealt with to artificially foreshadow Grey being immensely powerful. The thing is, there was already such a trauma in the comics that they didn’t use and would’ve been just as effective: Grey was present as a child when her best friend was hit by a car, and she felt her die in her mind. Xavier was called in to help and he put blocks on her telepathy which only came down later.
Having said that, changing Grey’s backstory so that she was indirectly responsible for the car crash that killed her mother and injured her father mostly just serves as an artificial conflict to set Grey against Xavier.
Artificial conflicts are the order of the day in this movie, as the X-Men confront Grey in full uniform ready for a fight when all she’s done is go to her home. It’s an unnecessarily provocative setup that makes no sense when we’re talking about friends going after friends. (Grey hasn’t proven to be that dangerous yet.)
After that, a single incident in the suburbs in which a few people get hurt and one X-Men team member is killed suddenly leads to mutants being vilified again. It’s too quick a change for not a good enough reason. If Grey had killed a bunch of people, or done something more public and brutal, that would be one thing, and even then, it wouldn’t be an instant process where they go from hot-line to the president to mutant containment facilities in a day.
And then there’s the attack in New York, in which Xavier urges Magneto not to have a big-ass fight in a city because that will make things worse, and then both sides not only fight, but have absolutely no regard for civilian casualties. One expects that from Magneto, but the X-Men aren’t any better in this regard, with Cyclops casually zapping cars and buses and so on.
People change loyalties at the drop of a hat, not due to any noticeable character reason, but because that’s what the script says they do. Grey’s anger at Xavier for something her father asked him to do makes no sense (though one can chalk it up to the influence of the cosmic force consuming her), Magneto makes several changes of heart all throughout the movie, the Beast decides to join Magneto in going after Grey because of Mystique’s death, and none of it has any obvious emotion behind it.
Worst, though, is Nightcrawler suddenly becomes bloodthirsty, deliberately killing several D’Bari for no reason that the script can be arsed to explain. Always a most compassionate and religious character, to have him suddenly go Wolverine on the D’Bari makes absolutely no sense. Much like the rest of the movie, truth be told.
The death of Mystique is so constructed, you can see the strings. It’s there to move the plot along, not because it makes any kind of sense (and can’t Grey use her super-telekinesis to at least keep her alive until an ambulance gets there?), or maybe because the now-much-more-famous-than-she-was-in-2011 Jennifer Lawrence only was available for a minimal role.
As with the previous films, the ten-year jump proves (again) to be utterly unconvincing. Aside from being bald, James MacAvoy doesn’t look like he’s thirty years older than he was in First Class, and Michael Fassbender and Nicholas Hoult don’t even have that going for them, they just look a few years older, not three decades. Tye Sheridan, Alexandra Shipp, Evan Peters, and Kodi Smit-McPhee all act exactly the same as they did in Apocalypse, with no indication in looks, body language, or personality to indicate that they’ve aged ten years since the last movie.
The worst, though, as I feared from her lackluster performance in Apocalypse, is Sophie Turner, on whom the movie pretty much hinges. Unfortunately, she’s awful. The script calls for her to be tormented, but she mostly just looks constipated, with the glowy eyes and fiery veins attempting to show her turning evil because her performance just is not up to the challenge.
Things are here because they were in the original story—Phoenix being “born” in space, a fight in a mansion in Manhattan, a climactic confrontation against a group of aliens—but they have no emotional or story reason for being there, they’re just, y’know, there and stuff.
I will say that for a first-time director, Kinberg does a good job with the action sequences, which are visually exciting and well choreographed. But the script is so limp, the performances so nowhere, that it’s impossible to even care that this is likely the last X-movie in this uneven cycle. As good as MacAvoy and Fassbender are, they still can’t hold a candle to Sir Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellen, and the three “history” movies that don’t have the latter two in them also have suffered from their absence.
In 2000, X-Men took the world by storm and revolutionized superhero movies, leading to the 21st-century renaissance that has taken over the popular cinema landscape in the two decades since. In 2019, that movie’s final spinoff went out with a whimper. The whole thing might’ve been better off ending with 2017’s Logan, a much more fitting conclusion to this series than this leaden, sodden mess.
Next week, we conclude our run through 2019 with Joker.
Keith R.A. DeCandido has written one piece of X-Men fiction in his career, a short story called “Diary of a False Man” in the 2000 anthology X-Men Legends. Jean Grey is the POV character in that tale, which provides the origin of the obscure mutant known as the Changeling. Keith was also the editor of a series of Marvel novels in the 1990s which included a bunch of X-Men novels. Two trilogies in that series, 1996’s Mutant Empire by Christopher Golden and 1999’s Gamma Quest by Greg Cox, have been recently reprinted by Titan. The other X-novels in the series were written by eluki bes shahar, Richard Lee Byers, Adam-Troy Castro, Tom DeFalco, Diane Duane, Jason Henderson, Ann Nocenti, Dave Smeds, and Dean Wesley Smith.
I can’t believe they messed up the Dark Phoenix storyline again. Sigh.
My review:
https://christopherlbennett.wordpress.com/2019/12/22/thoughts-on-dark-phoenix-or-is-it-x-men-dark-phoenix-spoilers/
I’m amused that Keith and I both used the phrase “take a mulligan” to refer to Kinberg redoing his story. I don’t even play golf! (It is from golf, right?)
Excerpts from my review:
Certainly the film has flaws, some that I only realized after the fact and a few that stood out right away and took me out of the film. But overall, I found it to be a reasonably effective story, and on balance I’m satisfied with how it played out.
In some respects, the film uses the same beats as The Last Stand. It keeps the idea that Jean Grey always had extraordinary power that Charles Xavier suppressed with mental blocks, tarnishing his pure image and turning Jean against him when she finds out and the barriers in her mind fall down… But the way it plays out is very different, feeling like a deliberate counterpoint to TLS’s choices, and I prefer this version, which turns out to be far more optimistic and better serves the characters and their relationships.
In other ways, though, the characterizations are a weak point of the film. It’s relatively short by modern standards, only about 100 minutes of story once you subtract end credits, so most of the ensemble cast gets only cursory attention and the plot is raced through. Some of the character transitions and motivations are too abrupt and extreme. Jean turns on the team too quickly after learning Xavier lied to her about her childhood, although to be fair, it is shown that she has no control when her newly unleashed rage takes over. But when she accidentally kills Mystique…, both Magneto/Erik and Beast/Hank jump way too quickly to wanting to murder Jean in retaliation. It’s kind of silly the way it plays out with Magneto. Erik: “I stopped killing because I realized revenge didn’t make the pain go away.” Hank, a couple of scenes later: “Raven’s dead.” Erik: “REVENNNNNNGE!” Hank’s motivation doesn’t work much better — the film seems to suggest a romance between him and Raven, which I don’t think is something ever suggested in previous films (I could be wrong), and is unnecessary because their long friendship going back decades should be enough.
…
Still, what ultimately works for me is how much more optimistically the Phoenix story plays out than in the original film version. In TLS, Magneto wanted to exploit Jean as a weapon for his war on non-mutants; here, he tries to keep the peace and stops her from harming a group of soldiers — and his desire for revenge only lasts for the second act before he chooses a nobler path. In TLS, Jean was so overcome by her runaway power and madness that she killed both Cyclops and Xavier, the two people she was closest to; here, it’s their love for her that reaches her through her pain and bitterness and reminds her of who she is. In TLS, Jean lets Wolverine execute her to stop her from killing her family, but here, she makes her own sacrifice by choice, embracing the power and evolving into something higher in order to save her family. Not only that, but the mature entity she becomes at the end is a really beautiful rendering of the Phoenix in its full flaming majesty, the sort of thing I kept hoping for in the original films but never got. Throw in the additional optimistic beat of that one soldier choosing to trust the X-Men and release them to help defend against the attacking D’Bari, and the upbeat turn the film takes in its last act does a lot to make up for its shortcomings, and works well as a rebuke to the nihilism of TLS.
…
By the way, one odd thing Dark Phoenix shares with one of its predecessors is an apparent desire to homage Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The climax and final scene of X2: X-Men United were deliberately meant to evoke TWOK’s ending, with the closing shot having the same kind of hint of the sacrificed character’s resurrection, a voiceover from said character, and a very similar musical sting leading into the end credits. Here, there’s a sequence where Vuk is tempting Jean with the power of the Phoenix and showing her a mental simulation of using its power to bring life to a lifeless world, and it’s essentially a higher-quality recreation of the Genesis simulation from Carol Marcus’s project proposal in TWOK (the first entirely CGI sequence ever used in a feature film, though beating TRON to the screen by only a month). Interesting to see the same idea executed with technology 37 years more advanced, though it seems a bit incongruous in this film.
I’ve enjoyed all the previous X-Men films in one way or another (knowing full well that some were better than others). This is the first one that was just “meh” for me. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t really like it either. It seemed very slick, but not emotionally engaging at all. And I agree with Keith’s assessment that too many plot points didn’t make sense, even allowing some leeway for “superhero movie logic.”
Reading along, I thought the plot summary sounded pretty interesting up until the aliens show up.
I find them a bizarre choice by Kinberg on all levels. Why initially plan to use Skrulls? I’m guessing this is because Fox had Fantastic Four rights and Skrulls are part of that package? But there is no strong history between them and the X-men. And why have the aliens come to Earth at all if Phoenix has committed to atrocity?
And why re-do the Dark Phoenix story again so soon? Were there really no other worthy ideas to adapt from sixty odd years of comics? They really missed a chance to have a Kitty Pryde POV story in my opinion; she’s had very short shrift in the Fox-X-verse.
Krad is entirely right that this feels like echoing plot points without supporting them with strong reasons and character motivation.
Oh no! Are we that close to this series ending? What will I read on Fridays? I hope Keith has a surprise in store for us.
(As you have widened the lens over the course of this series, are there any more skipped films to come back to? I’d still love for you to cover the several 1940s serials which at least are theatric, if not films.)
We only just rented this a few months ago, so this is basically taken from another comment I recently left on it:
I thought I would enjoy it – I actually quite liked Apocalypse and tend to have a soft spot for these movies.
But man, what a slog!!! It was just a bunch of loosely strung together fight scenes and whiplash character development that made zero sense. Oh, Magneto is good now. Nope, he’s bad again! Nope, he’s good again! Beast goes bad a bit…then he goes good again! Nightcrawler kinda goes dark for a hot second…Storm tries to convince Cyclops that all along Jean was evil, but then is all gung ho about saving her…and so on. And why on earth would Xavier actually start a fight in the middle of frickin NYC???? Aaaargh.
The “aliens” were the most shallow, cardboard plot device ever…and how on earth did the X-Men get away with ZERO CONSEQUENCES for all of the carnage anyway? (Also, did they totally just genocide the remains of a dying civilization?)
Raven is really the only character that seems to have some interesting depth in her talk of family and recognizing Xavier’s overly controlling ways, but then they kill her off so a bunch of people can be sad about it and try to kill Jean, and then try to save Jean, in her honor.
As for Jean, I always thought the ‘Dark Phoenix’ idea was WAY more interesting as something that was solely inside herself; that at the end of Apocalypse she had learned embrace her power (I mean, come on, Frozen II is a WAY better movie when it comes to female empowerment than this). And then she just…morphs and fles away after all the talk of her emotions/love making her stronger and finding family and stuff? I’m not even sure what triggered her actual integration in this movie? The power of forgiveness? Realizing Xavier Cared All Along? I do think the ‘enter my mind’ trick was a nice touch, and in another movie could have been an incredibly powerful scene of trust/vulnerability.
As for Xavier – so, I definitely agree with the movie in that yup, he’s controlling and paternalistic and things he knows better than everybody else (although I don’t think that’s inconsistent with him MEANING well. Many well meaning people do unfrotunately keep secrets because they think it’s the best thing to do.). But hasn’t he already learned this lesson? Didn’t we already go through this in the last movie (not to mention the whole thing with coming to terms with Jean’s powers/mind?).
But on a meta level I’m also generally just kind of sick of the trend of deconstructing heroes. It can definitely be a good twist when done well, but it seems like it’s not even a twist anymore. Like, just let people be generally well-meaning (if not sometimes flawed or making the wrong decisions) heroes occasionally without some sinister implication.
The only cool thing about it was seeing how they used their powers together and Cyclops getting more to do. But I am so glad this was one of our free rentals, ha.
Oh, and completely agreed regarding Sophie Turner. I didnt care for her much in Game of Thrones, but in some ways her complete vagueness was in line with her character (similar to how I thought Emilia Clarke was at times a bit…blank). But every single thing I’ve seen her in she’s had the same vague stare and monotone speech pattern. At least Clarke showed some spark in movies like Solo.
@4/vinsentient: “And why have the aliens come to Earth at all if Phoenix has committed to atrocity?”
(I think you meant “no atrocity” there.)
It’s the Phoenix Force itself that the D’Bari (nee Skrulls) are after. It did destroy their world before coming to Earth and bonding with Jean, but rather than seeking revenge, the survivors’ goal is to control it and use its planet-destroying power to conquer and rule. Jean is the only entity that’s ever been able to bond with it and not be destroyed, so the D’Bari leader Vuk wants to win her over, attempting to seduce her to the dark side in a manner vaguely reminiscent of Mastermind’s role in the comics.
“And why re-do the Dark Phoenix story again so soon?”
I figure it’s just because Kinberg didn’t get to do it the way he wanted the first time. The movie that became The Last Stand was always meant to be the Phoenix/Dark Phoenix story, but the studio insisted that they graft on the more recent mutant-cure storyline from Joss Whedon’s X-Men comics, so that led to the Phoenix story getting sidelined and underdeveloped, and nobody was all that satisfied with the result. So this was a chance to do something closer to what they originally wanted, a story that was purely about the Phoenix.
@CLG – ha, well you’ve at least made a case for it being better than TLS in some respects. I did at least appreciate the ending fwiw.
One nitpick with the review: you mention Jean was ‘badly hurt’ but I seem to recall them making a point of mentioning she didn’t even have a scratch from the crash and questioning if she was even there.
Oh, and it was probably unfortunate that I watched this so close to Rise of Skywalker coming out because the scene with Magneto on the island wiht the helicopter was all I could think of during the infamous transport scene. (Hmm, is this a trope? Jean Grey/Rey/Elsa all as women with strong/dark power they must learn to overcome…?)
@8/Lisamarie: You’re right — during the car crash scene, we could see that Jean was surrounded by a sort of psychic bubble that kept any debris from hitting her, and we were told afterward that she didn’t have a scratch.
This is the only X-Men, or Marvel movie from any studio, that I did not see in a theater. Normally I don’t pay much attention to critical reviews, but from what I read on this one beforehand, I made the right choice.
Fool me once with Dark Phoenix… I should watch it just for completeness sake I suppose, at some point.
Joe: my next regular feature for this site will be announced on Thursday.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@@.-@ “Reading along, I thought the plot summary sounded pretty interesting up until the aliens show up.”
My thoughts exactly lol. Then it went off the rails.
Also, I’m very curious what Krad’s opinion of Joker will be.
Do people not remember Hank having unrequited romantic feelings for Raven? It was featured quite readily in First Class, and was a bit more subtly referenced in Days of Future Past and Apocalypse. I agree that his turn to “let’s kill Jean, because Jean killed Raven” is way too abrupt, but it didn’t come out of nowhere either.
Dammit, I really didn’t want to watch Joker. (heh)
Pretty much agreed with most points in this review. Don’t care enough to even pick this one apart.
Kinberg took the opposite approach to a grand finale like Endgame. This should’ve been a culmination to a years long build-up, not a toned down character study, as he called it. Using D’Bari was meaningless. They shoulda gone full sci-fi, taking advantage of the decade time jump to establish Xavier among the Shi’ar and take it from there. A scaled down weak mess of a mediocrity was what we got instead.
And I actually winced at the paragraph describing Sophie Turner’s performance. Ouch.
Jennifer Lawrence died because she wanted out. She was signed for 3 films (First Class, Days and Apocalypse) and only signed onto the this if they promised to kill her off.
That being said, this is the worst film of 2019. I give Kinberg credit for coming out and taking the hit for it’s failures. He’s a fine writer and producer and hopefully will bounce back.
@13/willdevine: Okay, thanks for clarifying. I thought I might just not remember it. Still, I don’t think the story needed an attraction there. It’s simplistic to think that any male-female interaction in a story has to be about love or sex. Beast and Mystique had been friends and companions for 30 years by this point (despite barely aging, since apparently Marvel’s sliding timescale is in effect), and it was even mentioned that they were the last two remaining members of the original X-Men. That should’ve been enough by itself to establish their bond. I mean, surely Hank’s had 30 years to find someone else to be in love with.
@14/Sunspear: The one positive thing I can say about Sophie Turner’s performance as Jean is that it wasn’t quite as lifeless as Tye Sheridan’s performance as Scott.
While we’re on the subject — is this the only X-Men movie featuring Scott Summers in which he never takes off his Cyclops visor? Usually he switches to ruby-quartz sunglasses when he’s not in uniform, but here it was all visor, all the time. We didn’t even get the scene where Jean uses her Phoenix powers to suppress his eye beams so she can gaze into his eyes. (Although last time that happened in live action, IIRC, it led to Scott being pointlessly disintegrated, so maybe they didn’t want to remind us of that.)
See, I thought Days of Future Past was a good place to end the series. Cut out that sequel bait at the very end and it’s a nice happy ending. I guess that’s why I never rushed out to see these movies after it.
I felt some of the problems with this movie came from trying to create a cosmic power in a limited movie budget. And I’m not merely talking about Dark Phoenix. The other mutants just don’t have the scope to use their powers intelligently – it’s cheap and easy to have anything happen in a comic, but cinema is far more limiting. And the writers weren’t up to the power levels either, frankly – there are multiple instances of characters slowly increasing their power use (presumably to create drama) when it would have made far more sense to simply bring out the big guns at once, especially since they’re so powerful that the “big guns” aren’t anywhere near their maximums.
Logan was better dramatically, but also did a better job of showcasing powers. The dying Xavier’s power seizures actually demonstrated why everyone, including himself, was afraid of him.
It’s kinda funny that the last movie in the Superhero Rewatch is going to be a Supervillain film with no costumed heroes anywhere in sight.
@19/J. Bencomo: Also the last two films are named after their villains, essentially, since the theatrical title of this one was simply Dark Phoenix (albeit with a circle around the X to suggest the X-Men logo).
So in the previous movies, did Jean ever speak to Raven? If not, that’s another example of the problem of doing this story without enough build up.
I will say that with the next stage of the MCU, and the likes of Birds of Prey, WW84 and The Batman on the horizon, it does seem we’ll see more of this rewatch sometime down the road in due time…
@5/Joe: Agreed. I would love to have KRAD review The Adventures of Captain Marvel serial (1941) and the two Superman serials (1948 &1950). I recently received the three on DVD for Christmas and enjoyed watching them.
Wait, this rewatch is almost done?
@23/Paladin Burke: Other movie serials based on comic book or comic strip heroes include Mandrake the Magician (1939), the Flash Gordon trilogy, Buck Rogers, The Phantom (1943), Batman (1943), Batman and Robin (1949), Captain America (1944), several Dick Tracy serials, and some more obscure ones like Secret Agent X-9 (1937), Spy Smasher (1942), and a few others. There are also serials based on comic books like Hop Harrigan, The Vigilante, and Congo Bill and strips like Terry and the Pirates and Brenda Starr, but I’m not sure those are superhero-adjacent enough to qualify.
Austin: I’m kind of running out of movies…..
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I saw this movie when it came out, on a $4 ticket, and I still think I got ripped off. It was so aggressively mediocre.
I keep praying that the next reboot will do it right, even though I know better.
First Class actually gave me hope, you know? Though the very first one remains the best “What Did You Expect? Yellow Spandex?” but still.
Then the way they couldn’t be bothered to let Kitty tell Days of Future Past because Logan. All downhill from that descision.
Perhaps someday I can get three X-Men movies:
1) Intro with “God Loves, Man Kills”
2) Days of Future Past as it should be. With Kitty telling the tale like the holocaust survivor she essentially was in the comics.
3) Dark Phoenix – again as it should be. In two movies – start with the Hellfire club in part one and end with the Phoenix bursting out of the crash.
But Hollywood doesn’t work that way…
@17 Kowalski: Funny thing is, nothing even came of the sequel bait at the end of DOFP anyway. In Apocalypse, Raven is definitely not impersonating Stryker, and later they do find Wolverine in the Weapon X project, but which was presumably headed by the real Stryker.
And… Joker now has 11 Oscar nominations. Still haven’t watched it, still don’t want to.
-29
Yes, that was confusing to say the least.
This was a conflicting one for me. I really wanted to enjoy this. The trailers were reasonably promising.
At least, it’s a better, more functional film than Last Stand. Its heart is in the right place. It’s not competing with another major storyline, and you do get the characters’ motivations. It even has a pretty energetic first act. The whole space sequence shows the potential of a great X-film. Sadly, it’s all downhill once the Phoenix and the D’Bari set in.
Kinberg is a competent enough director, but he hasn’t yet developed the visual sense that comes with time. A sense that comes naturally to the likes of Singer and Matthew Vaughn (the battle in Manhattan reeks of untapped potential; I could picture Singer or Vaughn making it a highlight). And the script does no favors by playing up forced conflicts.
This would have benefitted from being not only a much longer film, but it really should have been divided into two parts, same as Avengers. The story is too extensive to be contained like this. There are ideas that could work pretty well, if they were given enough time to properly develop in a more natural fashion. Chief among them, is the concept of Xavier settling down and abandoning the fight for mutant rights, preferring to bask in the glow of government support and media attention. That should have been more than a simple subplot. It fits the trajectory of the McAvoy version of Xavier quite well, given his own withdrawal period from Days of Future Past.
I can picture Hank abandoning the X-Men in light of Mystique’s death. Hank’s attachment to Raven was established back in First Class. But Dark Phoenix rushes through these story beats without giving them time to breathe.
And a lot of the film hinges on Jean’s plight, and I have a hard time buying Sophie’s melodramatic take. I also have a hard time not seeing Sansa Stark. Famke did it better. Also, Cyclops should have been given more agency in this story, and he’s mostly reduced to the simplest archetype. It’s almost as if none of the filmmakers in the X film series trust the character to carry a story (and I’m not even remotely a Cyclops fan, but I can still see when an overlooked character needs more to do).
I don’t necessarily have a problem with Mystique’s death. She was noticeably absent in the future sequence at the end of DOFP, so there was a convenient opening to kill her off and bump up the stakes. Whether that was deliberate to accomodate Lawrence’s schedule or otherwise is a different story.
Overall, a missed opportunity of a film that could have been much more. I don’t know whether Kinberg and Shuler Donner were aware of Fox’s corporate fate, but they could have made a case for developing a two parter and give the series a bigger sense of closure rather than boil it down to a 100 minute snoozefest.
Finally saw this one the other night as it just premiered on HBO. I’ve been a huge fan of the X-Men ever since the 1992 animated series and then more so with the 2000 feature film. I’ve caught nearly every one in the theater but this one I skipped because I just felt no urgency or anticipation, and then all of the bad reviews on top of that. So in finally watching it, I gotta say, it wasn’t horrible but it was definitely very mediocre and bland. The action and choreographed fights were excellent but that’s not enough to hold a movie together with a story that’s lacking and the bland acting. Who ever thought that Sophie Turner would be able to anchor this film? And why retell the Phoenix tale again so relatively soon? I have no love for X-Men: The Last Stand either but that one had better acting at least and I have a fondness for those “original” actors. What an unfortunate limp note to end this series on. Any of the prior 3 flicks from DOFP to Logan would have served that role better.
Also, I believe Jennifer Lawrence was bored of playing Mystique as of Apocalypse so it’s not really that much of a surprise that she’s offer so soon into this film.
So I finally watched this movie. Going to post my review before I read yours.
The movie did some things well, there were some flaws it couldn’t escape, and some things it did terribly.
First let’s talk about the core that is the Dark Phoenix Saga in the comics (and the 1990’s cartoon, the most faithful adaptation so far). The Dark Phoenix saga mainly comprises these steps:
1) Jean Grey is established as a good person, a heroine among the X-Men
2) Jean Grey gets the Phoenix force, and uses it for good
3) Jean Grey gets manipulated by others (Hellfire Club) and then gets insane, can’t control her Phoenix powers properly, and ends up doing bad things, including genocide of an entire planet
4) The X-Men are able to help Jean control her Phoenix powers and stop being Dark Phoenix, at least for a time
5) The Shi’ar come to make Jean Grey stand trial for the genocide, and because the Phoenix force is too dangerous. The X-Men resist, in the end they go to blows in a trial by combat that will decide Jean’s fate.
6) The X-Men lose the trial by combat. The last two standing are Jean and Scott. As Scott is hit by the Shi’ar Imperial Guard, Dark Phoenix comes out of Jean and strikes back at the Shi’ar.
7) Jean knows she can take control of the Dark Phoenix only for a little bit. She uses her powers to make the Shi’ar spaceship weapons attack her, accepting her death as the only solution that will stop the bloodshed.
So the theme of the Dark Phoenix Saga is actually very similar to the overall X-men theme, aliens and clubs aside. It’s about a person getting a scary amount of power and a trial deciding whether that person should keep that power or is too dangerous to be allowed to live freely. It goes a little farther than the normal X-men theme, because the person is clearly established as good at first, but does evil acts later on, so the fear of the power is not irrational, neither is the desire for punishment. But the person who has the power is good, even if afraid. In the end, as Jean’s loved ones suffer, she realizes that the solution is her sacrifice, and she does it because in the end she’s a good person (as established in step 1), and she overcomes her fear of death because of the love for her friends (and Scott).
This movie does some good steps in the first two acts. It has to work with limitations, so it’s not as good as the comics (which movies are?).
Jean has barely been established as a character before this, nor has Scott. Which is a pity, their love is supposedly the spine of the story. X-Men movies, and First Class timeline, has concentrated mostly on Xavier, Magneto and Mystique. So it’s hard to carry along the story with the characters we have, but I see that the director tried. Some of the steps were established. Kinberg does show Jean sacrificing herself at the shuttle rescue. But that’s too little, too late if you truly want the audience feel the Dark Phoenix saga like it was felt at the comics.
There’s no Shi’ar trial, but Kinsberg decides to split the mutants around the decision to kill or save Jean. And that’s good. We care more about characters we’ve been a long time with, like Beast and Magneto, and care more about Mystique’s death than some nameless people we were never introduced to. He made it personal, and that’s good (even though two of the mutants on the “Kill Jean” side seemed to be there more because they were Magneto’s friends than because they were Mystique’s friends, but who knows, Mystique was a mutant idol, maybe they were her fans).
The problem is introducing the nameless aliens, and all the stuff in act 3. The nameless aliens are mustache twirling evil, wanting to use the Phoenix force to make Earth their planet, no matter who gets killed. And in the end, the conflict that was supposed to be about saving Jean, punishing Jean and killing Jean for everyone’s safety, ends up being about protecting Jean from the aliens and destroying the aliens. It’s weak, and jarring, because people who were all gung ho about Jean being punished or contained now defend her due to two lines of dialogue. Normally this takes time. In Captain America: Civil War, Black Panther is my favorite character because he changes his mind in the end, but it takes a lot to make it so. He has to see that Bucky is innocent and then, seeing he almost killed an innocent man, he stops Zemo from killing himself, because true justice is not about suicide or killing, he has more to answer for. In this movie Hank (Beast) could be that. He decides to kill Jean because he blames himself for Mystique’s death. But he never actually gets a dialogue line with Jean, to reconcile that they were friends once, and that Jean probably feels guilty about killing Raven. Nope, not one line at all.
Jean in the end kills herself and Jessica Chastain’s alien character (no alien gets a name in this movie) to save her friends and the Earth. This is a cop out, and goes against the Dark Phoenix Saga theme. The conflict should not end with Jean x Evil Alien Lady, it should end with Jean x herself. Even when the Shi’ar came in the comics, in the end, the conflict was about Jean and her crimes, not really aliens.
What I would do would be make Jean kill Xavier after she makes him walk, but then realize that there’s no happiness in revenge. Her happiest years actually were when she was living Xavier’s lie. So in the end she would accept being killed by others or would kill herself, to stop the bloodshed that was occurring because of the effect the Phoenix force had on her.
From what I’ve read, Kinberg didn’t want this ending, it was forced on him by the studio. In his ending, the X-men remain divided. That would make a lot more of sense.
.I actually think Last Stand is a better film than Dark Phoenix, In Last Stand all the cast did at least look like they wanted to be there, so many of the cast phoned in their performance in Dark Phoenix (Fassbender excepted I thought he was good) Also sadly I don’t think Sophie Turner had the acting chops to carry the lead role, she’d was perfectly fine as part of an ensemble on Game of Thrones indeed it could be argued she was one of the better things about the final two seasons, but she is not as good an actor as Famke Janssen and It showed here.
Also the horrendous decision to kill off Jennifer Lawrence’s Raven is up there with the beginning of Alien 3 for a ‘Thanks a lot for that” moment from the fans.
All in all a huge disappointment of a Finale for The Fox X-men franchise they would have been better going out with Logan..
So over to you Marvel Studios.