Dark Phoenix (GUEST Film Review)

For the first time ever on Film Reviewer Jr., I proudly present GUEST FILM REVIEW!!!  The part of the blog where a guest comes on board and writes a film review.

Introducing my special guest and close friend Joel Coppadge!

And thus has come the end of an era.  After 19 years, a dozen movies, and multiple mutants running around, we have our final X-Men Movie under the Fox banner.  Before we look towards of potential future where the X-Men enter the MCU, we must look back on the mistakes of both the past and present with this franchise, because sadly Dark Phoenix ends on a rather chaotic whimper rather than a glorious bang, like another big Marvel movie this year (will get to that later).  So short answer, is this the worse X-Men Movie?  I don’t think so. But is this movie bad?  Unfortunately, yes.  Does this movie have a lot of problems?  Oh god yes.

Long answer: This movie is full of forced conflicts, villains with shallow motivations, and characters going against who they are not only in the comics, but what was established in previous movies.

Which is a shame too, because as someone who is an X-Men fan, I wanted to be excited for this movie.  But as time passed, and we saw the release date changed several times, multiple reshoots, and having to come out the same year of two well-received marvel movies, one about women empowerment (Captain Marvel), and the last Avengers movie with the original lineup (Avengers: Endgame), all signs pointed to this movie to fail.  So what do I mean by that?  Well, let’s begin this journey into this movie’s flaws.

SPOILERS BEGIN BEYOND THIS POINT! YOU’VE BEEN WARNED

The movie begins in 1975, where we see 8-year-old Jean Grey have her mutant powers manifest for the first time, which results in both Jean and her parents getting into a car crash.  This leads to Jean meeting Charles Xavier, who tells her “both her parents had died” and offers her a home at his school, assuring her she’s not broken.  Right from the get-go I am already concerned that this flashback serves no purpose but set up a forced conflict for Jean to go crazy once she goes full Phoenix on her friends.  Before we get back to that problem we must address another problem that these prequel movies love to keep: the decades hopping gimmick.  It’s pointless to complain about the fact that a lot these character’s appearances don’t match their actual ages (Charles, Eric, Raven, and Hank should be in there 50s by now), but here it comes off as a cheat to have had so much time pass and act like this new team of X-Men are friends and are a well-oiled crime-fighting machine, when in reality fans just met this new team in the previous movie.  

One the few bright spots in the movie are that humanity seems okay with mutants thanks to the X-Men.  The president has a phone line directly to Charles that’s straight from Batman 66’.  The X-Men’s latest mission is to rescue astronauts in a space shuttle from some kind of solar flare like energy.  Seeing the combined teamwork of Cyclops and Storm keeping the shuttle in place, and Nightcrawler and Quicksilver rescuing the astronauts is fun.  One astronaut is left behind, causing Night Crawler to teleport Jean to rescue him, resulting in Jean getting left behind at the last minute and getting hit by the solar flare, aka the Phoenix Force.  But you might be asking yourself, “Wait, didn’t Jean already unleash the Phoenix in the last movie?”  Well, get used to that, because that and any other plot threads left unresolved in X-Men Apocalypse are non-existent in this movie.

Speaking of non-existent, that’s what you could call Jennifer Lawrence’s performance as Mystique/Raven in this movie because she’s been done playing X-Men for a while now.  It’s even more jarring when as the mutant who back in First Class coined the phrase: “Mutant, and proud” doesn’t stay blue even when she’s back at the school for mutants, you know, her family.  She’s only Mystique for less than 10 minutes, which is a shame as she is one of the few that calls out Charles on his inflated ego.  Even though humanity, has become more accepting of mutants because of the X-Men, she doesn’t want that if means risking the lives of the team. The risk is put on full display once Jean starts losing control of her powers, made worse once she discovers that Charles lied to her about her parents.  As it turns out, Jean’s dad is still alive (only her mom died in the car crash) and she goes out to find him, prompting the X-Men to go and try to help her.

So once again Charles messed with Jean’s head as a child just like in the original trilogy, only even worse.  Instead of helping Jean cope with her trauma, Charles just sweeps all that under the rug.  This is the first of a couple characters here who act completely out of character.  The stunt that Charles does goes against everything McAvoy has done in his portrayal of this character.  He did his best to help Erik (Magneto) overcome his own trauma way back in First Class, yet he couldn’t do the same for a little girl?  

If you were expecting an epic clash between the X-Men and Jean...well it’s far from epic.  One of the biggest problems with this movie is a lack of energy and excitement.  Say what you want about X3: The Last Stand, but despite all its problems, the movie not only felt big in terms of scale but in the stakes as well.  I understand the director wanted to make this a personal story, and Sophia Turner does the best she can do with the material she is given.  But besides Jean losing control of her powers, there isn’t much exploring the psychological toll the Phoenix Force is taking on Jean.  There isn’t even much exploring what’s suppose to be the emotional center of the movie: Cyclops and Jean. Once again Cyclops’ character arc starts and ends with Jean, but it’s even more problematic as Cyclops and Jean were barely friends in the last movie and we’re now supposed to believe that they’re lovers, but it’s not convincing.

Once words fail the X-Men fight Jean and it goes as well as you can expect. Also, if you were expecting a Quicksilver scene, you could say it goes by “quick,” as in ten seconds and him getting seriously injured and being benched for the rest of the movie.  Raven tries to reason with Jean, but once again she loses control of her powers and Raven is blasted back and impaled on nearby debris, dying as a result.

The aftermath of Raven’s death and Jean flying away results in what should be escalated tension from both humans and some of the X-Men.  Not only does Jean become the government's most wanted, but the president disconnected the “X-phone” and is immediately distrustful of the X-Men.  But again, outside of trashing some cop cars, and accidentally killing Raven, she hasn’t done anything that bad to warrant this level of punishment.  I know Simon Kinberg wants this to be a more personal story, but based on how everyone is reacting to Jean becoming Dark Phoenix, she should have done something to warrant such tension.  If Jean had leveled a major city or disintegrated a bunch of people (Like she did in X3) I could see people’s concern over the X-Men somewhat warranted.  As for Beast, grief-stricken over Raven’s death, rightfully calls out Charles for how wrong his actions were, but then jumps ship and wants to kill Jean himself.

Jean then seeks out Magneto who makes his debut an HOUR into the movie, and this is the most unforgivable part of this movie.  Once again, we rehash Magneto’s arc from the last movie, where he’s been laying low for years, an incident brings back to the public eye, is against Charles, and at the last minute works with Charles to save the day.  The interactions between Jean and Magneto could have been interesting, but instead, feels like the characters themselves aren’t sure what they should be doing.  It isn’t until Jean attacks the military that Magneto tells her to beat it, as he sees her as a threat to his mutant refugee camp. One of the better parts is Beast and Magneto talking and reminiscing about Raven, even if it still leads them to want to kill Jean.

So where does that leave Jean? Well that’s obvious: going to the “main villain” of the movie, Vuk (Jessica Chastain), leader of the D’Bari.  If talking about them now feels tacked on in this review is because it was tacked on the movie.  Had we had another movie to set up the existence of aliens in the X-Men movies, the D’Bari may have been better antagonists.  But instead, we’re stuck with villains who get very little screen time and have paper-thin motivations.  Again Jessica Chastain does her best with what little she’s given, especially when she’s the one encouraging Jean to embrace her darker inhibitions.

Eventually, both the remaining X-Men (Charles, Cyclops, Storm, and Nightcrawler) and Magneto’s team (including Beast) find Jean at the same time with the former wanting to save Jean, and the latter wanting to kill Jean.  A battle ensues between both groups, with a complete lack of concern for the innocent people caught in the crossfire.  Sure it doesn’t go into Man of Steel levels of overkill, but the fact the X-men aren’t even trying to move people away from cars being hurled, laser beams being blasted, or lighting from the sky, undermines everything they’ve done to earn the people’s trust.  Magneto eventually confronts Jean, leading to a rather hilarious exchange:

Jean: You cast me out, and now you come here to kill me?

Magneto: That’s right.

It’s these lines that make me believe the writers were aware of how ridiculous the plot was becoming.  Yes, Magneto wants to get revenge for Jean killing Raven, but again, this was an accident.  And as someone who was killed a lot of people in the past couple of decades, Magneto doesn’t have much moral high ground to judge Jean.  After Jean rips Magneto’s helmet to pieces and takes him out with ease, we finally get to see Jean act like the Dark Phoenix by forcing Charles to walk to her with her powers.  Had we seen more of this sadistic side of Jean throughout the movie, we could’ve had a stronger conflict between X-Men and Jean, determining whether Jean was beyond saving.  But then we’re reminded of the forced conflict, when Jean reads Charles mind, seeing her father wanted nothing to do with her after the car crash, Jean forgives Charles instantly.

After both Magneto and Charles’ teams are captured by the government troops (who took them and disabled their powers very quickly) and transported via train, Vuk and her D’Bari forces show up for the final battle to get Phoenix Force from Jean and burn the planet.  While fighting in a closed environment is something rarely seen in superhero movies, it’s pretty symbolic that it culminates into an actual train wreck.

This culminates to the final confrontation between Vuk and Jean, who awakes thanks to Charles.  Jean takes the Phoenix Force for herself and flies both Vuk and herself into space where they are killed in a glorious blaze of Phoenix fire.  Although glorious isn't the best word to describe this moment because once again it feels anti-climatic.  Would it have not been awesome for Jean to go all out against the D’Bari by herself?  Probably, but because this action scene was too similar to another big marvel movie, cough cough Captain Marvel, the scene was reshot to avoid comparison.

Our final wrap up sees Charles retire from teaching and move to Paris, Beast becomes the new headmaster of the school, with said school renamed after Jean Grey, and Erik and Charles reunite for a game of chess, as the Phoenix flies above the earth, watching and waiting.  I do find it interesting they renamed after a person that, while unintentional, caused a lot of problems for our heroes, and over naming it after Raven.  You know, one of the few mutant characters we’ve known since First Class, the person who wanted to be proud of her mutant powers, the person everyone and their mamas idolized in the last movie.  But I guess that wasn’t relevant to the plot.

And now we’ve completed our journey through this adaptation of  Dark Phoenix, which sadly fails just as much if not more than its predecessor, X-Men 3: The Last Stand. So we are left to ask why do the movies fail where the 90s cartoon show succeed?  What holds this movie back from at the very least being decent?  The answer is the characters.  Whereas the 90s cartoon had characterization established and consistent leading into the phoenix saga so you feel invested and care for our heroes, you don’t feel much for these heroes because of the lack of strong characterization, or even inconsistent characterization.  Storm showed her powers could work in space, yet she struggled to fight a mutant whose power was using his dreadlocks like whips.  Nightcrawler was established as the least violent of the X-Men, yet was killing D’Bari left and right during the train scene.  And worse, if you’d remove a couple of characters, the story doesn’t change that much, which is saying something when the MCU is capable of making an ever-expanding roster of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes feel important in some capacity, yet Fox struggled to find purpose of each member of the X-men.

In the end, while Dark Phoenix is nowhere near as rage-inducing as the likes of  Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice or Fan4stic, is still a disappointing way to end this era of the X-Men.  Now that they are owned by the house of mouse that is Disney, we can remain hopeful for the day they brought into the MCU, and much like the Phoenix, are reborn from the ashes and rise.