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
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