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    DARK PHOENIX ends the FoX-Men franchise, and that’s about it

    By Matthew Martin
    | June 8, 2019
    Movie Reviews

    There’s a very thin line between “drama” and “unintentional comedy.” It can be very hard to tell if the emotion you’re conveying is going to translate to the audience being moved or if there’s something in the shot that will cause eyes to roll. It’s such a difficult tightrope to walk it’s been said that no one (director, screenwriter, producer, actors) are even aware which side of it they’re on until the movie is finished. I suppose that means the blame falls on the editor but I don’t think that’s fair.

    Dark Phoenix was edited by a good editor, so that can’t be the reason this movie is such a mess.

    Lee Smith is an academy award winner. He has handled the cut on every Chris Nolan movie, as well as other gems like Master and Commander, The Truman Show, and even—keeping within the genre—X-Men: First Class. Those movies had great moments of drama and managed not to collapse. A comic book movie like First Class has all the cornball stuff you expect in an X-Men film but everything is played straight (like an X-Men film should) and…it works. The drama feels like drama and there’s never a moment when you laugh at how stupid it all is. You buy in. You suspend disbelief. Comic Book movies live and die on such things. It’s the difference between this:

    Avengers Infinity War Thanos Josh Brolin

    and this:

    Fantastic Four Mr

    No, there must be something else wrong with Dark Phoenix, and—by extension—with all movies that fail to capture the right tone.  There must be some explanation because the X-Men franchise deserves one. It’s been an up-and-down series of movies, but the ups have been tremendous (X2, First Class, Days of Future Past) and overall the franchise (in the top-ten box office earners of all time) deserved a better ending.

    If I had to put an emotion on it, I would say Dark Phoenix is a movie that feels “uncertain.”

    X Men Dark Phoenix Poster 2

    There are great actors in this movie but none of them seem to know what they are supposed to be doing with the very superficial and thin screenplay. There are good ideas to be found here, but they’re lost amidst a story that doesn’t know how to develop them or the characters at the heart of them.

    X Men Dark Phoenix Jennifer Lawrence Raven Mystique Sophie Turner Jean Grey

    If you’re going to blame someone, blame Simon Kinberg, the producer-turned-first time director who has been arguably the second most influential person in the X-Men franchise at Fox after Bryan Singer. After Josh Trank imploded during the making of Fantastic Four, Kinberg stepped in and oversaw the reshoots to “save” the picture. During the filming of X-Men: Apocalypse, when Singer went AWOL just as the latest round of allegations came to light, Kinberg stepped in to keep the shoot running on time. He’s clearly a hands-on producer and someone with plenty of experience. After all, he’s been involved in every main-series X-Men movie since the third film (The Last Stand).

    But he’s neither a great writer nor a great director.

    Dark Phoenix felt like a movie that had a checklist of things to accomplish, accomplished them, and then the credits rolled leaving the audience feeling empty, leaving the franchise to effectively end with a feeling of “that’s it?” It felt like exactly what it was: A producer became the director, looked over his checklist, and then started ticking things off, one by one, without any of the intangible stuff that good directors bring to a shoot, without any of the flair or clever moments of inspiration that lifts a movie from something mundane to something with life.

    [] Do yet another version the Dark Phoenix plot

    [] Make the villain an alien invader

    [] Give the X-Men more “comic-like” costumes

    [] Have some deaths for drama’s sake

    [] End with Xavier and Magneto, putting a cap on the series

    Five big boxes and the film checks them all but there’s no stitching, not energy, nothing to make the plot feel like an organic story where each part fills like a piece of the whole.

    Yes, there is “Dark Phoenix” plot. I suppose it’s marginally more faithful to the comics than the 2006 movie tried to be (Kinberg helped write that one too), but not enough to matter, and it’s not good enough to make the changes worthwhile.

    Yes, the villain is an alien invader, but there are no Skrulls (even though the aliens can shapeshift), nor is there a Hellfire Club (even though they try to manipulate Jean/Phoenix), nor Lilandra (even though Jessica Chastain would have been perfect). The villain aspect of the plot had no significant development of any kind. They were the definition of one-note villains who appeared, attempted to execute their plot, and then were foiled, boom-boom-boom.

    X Men Dark Phoenix Jessica Chastain Vuk Sophie Turner Jean Grey 2

    Yes, the leather uniforms are gone, and the replacements look sort of like the New X-Men unis, if you blur your vision and squint. Up close, however, they look like they were bought at a Halloween store.

    Yes, there are deaths, but the drama fails. A final “I love you” before dying looks good in a note but you have to make it work on the screen. A sacrificial death to save…well, nothing really, is all well and good as an idea (except for the “saving nothing” part) but coming as the climax of a story that had no actual build-up makes it worthless.

    Yes, the final shot of the movie offers a nice little capper on the Xavier/Magneto story that’s always been at the heart of the X-Men. That’s fitting (on paper) since the series is ending and Kevin Feige’s MCU is taking ownership. But it fails within the context of this movie since Xavier and Magento are—at best—supporting players here and only had a single scene in this movie before the final shot.

    This is a movie written and directed by a producer, and it shows.

    X Men Dark Phoenix Nicholas Hoult Beast Michael Fassbender Magneto Kodi Smit Mcphee Nightcrawler Alexandra Shipp Storm Kota Eberhardt Selene Gallio

    Mercifully though, it is ended. Now the franchise can rest, cocoon itself in the sheltering arms of the MCU, and one day rise again, greater than ever, with stories told by storytellers who actually care about putting the comic page on the screen, and who know how to adapt those comic pages into stories that work as movies.

    Dark Phoenix wasn’t that.

    4/10 – A really very below-mediocre movie, with a wasted cast, some long stretches of boredom, and disconnected story beats.

    Take a break, mutants. See you in six or seven years.

    Tags

    Comic Book MoviesX-Men

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    13 Comments
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    Arabella
    Arabella
    4 years ago

    I suppose I’m one of the lone few who liked the film. I’ve always found Jean Grey interesting and wondered how things ended up as they did.

    0
    Reply
    KeeperofUnicorns
    KeeperofUnicorns
    4 years ago
    Reply to  Arabella

    No, I liked it as well. It was nice to see her humanized for a change and Sophie Turner did a remarkable job portraying Grey’s emotions and thought process.

    0
    Reply
    Bridget
    Bridget
    4 years ago

    I used to enjoy the X-Men movies but the last few movies have been a flop for me. I was pretty excited to see Apocalypse and it was very underwhelming. I get the feeling that’s the impression this one would leave me with if I were to go out and see it.

    0
    Reply
    Rob Duggat
    Rob Duggat
    4 years ago

    I think there’s a danger in over developing a single character and leaving the rest seeming too shallow. This difficulty falls on the editor as well as the director to find a good balance between the characters and all the while still progressing the story the “way it is supposed to go.” I feel for how tough that must be at times for each role.

    0
    Reply
    holy55
    holy55
    4 years ago
    Reply to  Rob Duggat

    Who is that character for you? I’m not very deep into the X-Men universe, but I don’t feel like there is one character too strong that he overshadows everyone else. This story is about Jean, and for what it’s worth, I think the actress did well portraying the duality, but it doesn’t emotionally pay off in the end.

    0
    Reply
    Rob Duggat
    Rob Duggat
    4 years ago
    Reply to  holy55

    Hey Holy56! I was referring to the article stating that many of the characters stories seemed shallow and one dimensional, which I certainly can agree with. I wanted to point out that there is a danger with over developing a character as well because there’s only so much screen time and about a million characters to squeeze in!

    0
    Reply
    holy55
    holy55
    4 years ago
    Reply to  Rob Duggat

    I see. I thought you had a specific character in mind. That gets me thinking that even in old X-Men movies the group is almost always together, so they have to split the screen time for everyone or over-focus on a character at the expense of the others.

    0
    Reply
    SaveMe
    SaveMe
    4 years ago

    It’s always hard to understand why an adaptation of a completed series fails to develop ideas or characters. Then again, we shouldn’t expect some big growth in just a two-hour show. That’s what the previous movies should’ve helped to build but failed. Maybe this isn’t the fault of Dark Phoenix specifically; the end displays the true weakness of the whole movie franchise.

    0
    Reply
    Zoey
    Zoey
    4 years ago
    Reply to  SaveMe

    I completely agree with you. I don’t think this movie had a strong foundation to back it up. That’s why this failed to deliver in the way that “End Game” did.

    0
    Reply
    Zoey
    Zoey
    4 years ago

    Eh, I’m not a fan of the X-Men movies, so this review doesn’t surprise me. It sounds like the other movies in the franchise. So I guess the previous movies weren’t written and directed by producers? Because they seemed to achieve the same thing.

    0
    Reply
    Silver
    Silver
    4 years ago

    Let me start by saying that I haven’t watched every movie in the franchise. I think they are easy to follow as standalone movies. Having said that, I just saw Dark Phoenix and I’m one of the lone viewers who liked it. The story line kept my attention and I thought the characters were intriguing. There’s plenty of great action too.

    0
    Reply
    Natasha Yves
    Natasha Yves
    4 years ago
    Reply to  Silver

    Do you know how some bands release an album and every sound sounds almost identical? Sure the lyrics are completely different, and sometimes there’s even a new instrument thrown in, but they all “feel” the same. That’s how I feel about the movies. There are a few great gems in the bunch but it is hard to stand out as a great movie when it is always the same plot and always the same personalities.

    0
    Reply
    Snarky-Guru
    Snarky-Guru
    4 years ago

    I’ve heard so many bad things about the film that I haven’t gone to the cinema to see it yet. Is it that bad or are expectations too high? I have to admit that I find the alien invader twist a bit odd.

    0
    Reply

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