Movie Reaction: Dark Phoenix

Formula: X-Men - X2: X-Men United - X-Men: The Last Stand - X-Men Origins: Wolverine - X-Men: First Class - The Wolverine - X-Men: Days of Future Past - X-Men: Apocalypse - Logan

I've been searching for a good analogy for the X-Men movie series. Here's the best on I've got. The X-Men series is a sports team that gets into the playoffs with an unproven roster. It continues to make the playoffs every year for a long time. Whenever it seems like the roster has gotten too old or stale, they manage to make a couple great draft picks from the middle of the draft that keeps it viable. It continues to make the playoffs for many years longer than any other team, but it never makes it out of the first round. There's no way the roster can ever win a championship, but the owners don't have the stomach to tear everything apart and do a rebuild. Eventually, it does fall out of the playoffs, and even though its run was impressive, no one really notices, since it was never really a contender.

How'd I do? Sounds about right, doesn't it?

Superhero movies owe a lot to 2000's X-Men. Before that, the superhero movies that were getting made didn't feel replicable. Superman and Batman seemed distinct and unique. X-Men was the first movie that felt like any studio could do it*. It also unleashed the Marvel characters in a big way. While, X-Men is the Marvel Studios godfather, it's the Oz and Spider-Man is The Sopranos: the cultural phenomenon that first mastered the formula. It's pretty amazing how Fox has kept the X-Men series going. After X-Men: The Last Stand, they had no clear direction. The movies since have been all over the place. They had three different unconnected Wolverine movies that ranged from incompetent (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) to gritty and awesome (Logan). They functionally rebooted the series once with X-Men: First Class and immediately backed away from the reboot with X-Men: Days of Future Past. They took a chance on Deadpool that paid-off huge. After 19 years and 12 movies the series has an eclectic catalog of moderate to massive successes...until now.

*Yes, I'm aware that Blade came first. No, I don't think it counts. Most people aren't even away that it's tied to a comic book, let alone a Marvel comic.

This isn't going to be a "pile-on" review about Dark Phoenix. It bombed at the box office and has received the worst reviews in the series. That's somewhat misleading though. Sequels are lagging indicators. Often, they say as much about the previous movie as the current one. Dark Phoenix bombed for many reasons and it being bad was only one of many. First, people didn't like X-Men: Apocalypse very much. So, the people who are aware of what's going on in the X-Men universe came into this with that bad taste in their mouth. Everyone not paying close attention has no idea what's going on with the X-Men movies at this point. First Class rebooted it, but there are still these Wolverine movies floating around that appear to be from a different timeline entirely. Wolverine shows up through time travel in Days of Future Past and as cameos in First Class and Apocalypse. It's a fucking mess. I don't blame anyone for being confused about which characters are even in Dark Phoenix (or why). Fox couldn't've done more to scare aware the audience. And, the "worst reviews of the series" part is baffling to me. X-Men Origins: Wolverine was garbage. People were vicious about The Last Stand. Apocalypse was thoroughly unremarkable. Dark Phoenix's reviews are more of a bellwether for the franchise as a whole than a response to the movie itself*.

*For example, how long have I gone on already without getting into anything specific about Dark Phoenix?

So, Dark Phoenix is another attempt at the Jean Grey story from X-Men: The Last Stand. Unlike The Last Stand though, the whole focus gets to be on Jean Grey's heel turn. All the mutants you know and love are back, played by actors you probably forgot were in the roles now. I don't have time to cover all the names. Xavier (James McAvoy), Magneto (Michael Fassbender), and Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) are still the big names. It's 1992 now. Yes, somehow 30 years have passed without any actors looking that different than they did in First Class (the early 60s). After a space mission goes wrong, Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) gets supercharged powers and becomes a nuisance to society. After a few public outbursts by Jean leave people hurt or killed, all the work Xavier has done to ease the relationship between mutants and non-mutants is undone. That means the military is after the mutants again. More importantly, Jessican Chastain and some other aliens are after Jean's powers. Jean must eventually decide who's side she's on before it's too late.

I don't know a lot about the Dark Phoenix saga in the comics, but I can confirm that this story could've used more time to breathe as a movie. There isn't much room for nuance here. This is also all painfully familiar ground for anyone who has seen the other X-Men movies. It's just all massively abbreviated. I've noticed a problem with a lot of comic book movies lately. Many of them rely on you knowing about the characters already (Man of Steel plays a lot on Superman iconography from decades of films, Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse assumes audience knowledge of the origin story going in so they can have fun changing it later), but they also ask you to pretend that you don't know the story they are telling already. In Dark Phoenix, that means, I'm supposed to appreciate the Jean Grey/Cyclops relationship from the original trilogy but ignore the fact that they already told this story before in The Last Stand. You see, I'd like to have this cake, but I'd like to eat it too.

Honestly, I was fine with this movie. I was fine with Apocalypse too. In fact, the only X-Men movie I haven't mostly liked was X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Otherwise, they are all flawed but enjoyable. They've always cast the movies well. The action sequences are entertaining. I even enjoy the philosophical musings. On a very basic level, I liked Dark Phoenix. That said, it is really ending things with a whimper.

Because, let's be clear. X-Men is changing and soon. Hugh Jackman has retired as Wolverine. Disney just bought the X-Men rights along with the rest of Fox studios. The timeline has nearly caught up to the 2000 X-Men movie that started it all. Deadpool exists in its own universe. There wasn't even a post-credits scene in Dark Phoenix. I'm pretty sure this is the end of an era: a sometimes frustrating but always interesting era. The last remnant of a pre-MCU era of comic book movies.

Welcome to Disney, X-Men.

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend