X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019) Review

X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019)

Dark Phoenix follows Jean Grey, who, after a mission in space, is left with unimaginable power, as well as the knowledge that Charles lied about her past, sending her on a rampage fueled by a being who seeks to manipulate her power. 

If it at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again. A phrase Fox took to heart when adapting the Dark Phoenix saga for the second time, after X-Men: The Last Stand put the nail in the coffin the first time. And whadaya know, they somehow fucked it up again. Something that has consistently made this series great has always been the contradiction between humans and mutants and their seeming endless battle over the naturality of mutations and whether they are dangerous, rich in allusions to real racial, gender and other forms of discrimination. Dark Phoenix however, takes a different approach, and just goes full alien, in what I assume is meant to be the Skrulls, whose true motives remain erratic as they, I assume, want to bring back their race, though how the Phoenix powers factor into that is unknown. 

What had the possibility of being the strongest story in the X-Men’s final playbook then, ends up a cobbled together, hollow, sad excuse of a film that once again, had no clue what to do with Jean and her rushed turn to evil. It feels like a sequel for sequels sake and never a chance to tell a good story, or even give these characters the fitting end they deserve after  nearly a decade. 

We get a pretty phoned in cast, starring Jennifer Lawrence, Evan Peters, Alexandra Shipp, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Michael Fassbender, Nicholas Hoult, Tye Sheridan, Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy, and Sophie Turner. Chastain is rightfully awful here, and though Hoult, Sheridan, and Smit-McPhee have some brief glimpses of excellence, it’s hard to outweigh such a dull villain, let alone two. 

X-Men: Dark Phoenix, directed by Simon Kinberg, is quite possibly the worst in the entire franchise, once again butchering the Dark Phoenix storyline in favor of an even messier story than the last, in what is a sad end to Fox’s X-Men series. 

5.1/10