Over the course of nineteen years and twelve movies, Fox has released X-Men movies of varying quality. Most okay at best, a couple that are excellent, and most that are very bad. The biggest sin this franchise has suffered is being stuck in a retrograde early 2000s aesthetic. Here we are with the seventh and final installment in the main series is Dark Phoenix. And you know they’re serious this time out as X-Men is missing from the title. After doing a piss poor job adapting “The Dark Phoenix Saga” in X-Men: The Last Stand with the old crew, series stalwart Simon Kinberg makes his directing debut, trying again with the prequel cast. And it turns out that it’s the same X-Men film that they’ve been making for almost twenty years now.

During a dangerous mission with the X-Men in space, Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) absorbs a cosmic entity that unleashes her dark side. After a series of escalating incidents, mutants now must fend for themselves after Jean’s newfound power grows stronger and more unstable. Meanwhile, the leader of a mysterious alien race (Jessica Chastain) seeks the power for global domination and annihilation.

The biggest problem here is that there is a whole movie’s worth of character development missing from X-Men: Apocalypse to this film. Professor X as a sniveling, egotistical villain could’ve worked had there been a movie in between these two to reach this point. James McAvoy plays the Professor as smarmy, and almost hand-rubbingly comical to drive home the fact that we’re not supposed to be rooting for Charles Xavier this time out. With a mouthwatering grin and watery eyes, it was a little too much. As always, these X-Men films have no clue what to do with Professor X (Logan being an exception) and it shows here. Remember Rose Byrne’s Moria MacTaggert who was Charles Xavier’s love interest in both First Class and the previous film? Never mentioned here. You’d think this being the last one they’d wanna touch upon that.

Michael Fassbender’s Magneto had the most interesting storyline which should’ve been its own film. Granted the island of Genosha by the U.S, government, this has been its own storyline in the comics for Magneto giving our villain/anti-hero some much-needed pathos. In fact, it would’ve been cool to explore how a former bad guy tries to atone for his past sins by creating a community shut off from the world to help others like him. It’s just too bad all of that falls to the wayside for Magneto to briefly break bad, then turn good again.

I feel bad for Sophie Turner. She is giving a great performance for material that is not really there. Scott (Tye Sheridan) and her are now in a relationship and this is where I mean that there’s a movie missing. In Apocalypse, Scott had a crush on Jean and Jean was just trying to make friends with everyone. Here, they’re in a relationship and it doesn’t feel natural. I do appreciate that this time out, they put here front and center instead of a chess piece like in The Last Stand. This also brings up the many, many continuity problems that have plagued this series. In the previous film, it is shown that the Phoenix Fore was inside of her all along like the OG trilogy, now they take it back to their cosmic roots of the Phoenix Force being an entity. There’s something to be done here with a woman’s emotions and problems trying to be figured out be men seeing how the X-Men has worked with allegories since their comic book debut.

But hey at least Jennifer Lawerence showed up for work this time out. It seemed like she actually gave a shit and turned in actual performance. And speaking of character development, remember how in X-Men: First Class how Mystique and Beast (Nicolas Hoult) had a thing for each other and it’s kinda been dropped in these last two movies? Well, there’s a very awkward scene where Mystique asks Beast to run away with her. Again, when did these two become a couple and it seemed Jen and Nicolas weren’t too keen on the scene for obvious personal reasons. Oh and for some reason, that’s not explained, Beast can transform into his human form at will. Seriously. Same goes for Mystique who has no reason to turn into Jennifer Lawerence in this film.

So, if you’re wondering just who Jessica Chastain is playing all I can say is a shape-shifting alien. They mention her name once and I can’t remember for the life of me. Not that it matters that much as honestly. She’s just there to push Jean towards evil and provide a villain for the X-Men to fight. And if you’re wondering why Jess’s eyebrows and hair are bleached blonde, maybe because she’s an alien, I can tell you that the alien kills human Jess who had bleached eyebrows and hair.

Narratively, there’s an odd pace to this movie. Taking place in 1992, it’s been 30 years since the events of First Class, and no one has aged. It’s weird how the prequel series jumps forward a decade with each film adding nothing aesthetically or narratively. But yeah, this is less than two hours and it feels both too long and too rushed. Part of that is due to properly service all of the characters. Sadly, this is the best use of Storm even if Alexandra Shipp’s African accent is so bad that at one point laughs erupted during my press screening. If you’re wondering of Evan Peter’s Quicksilver is given closure with Magneto, sorry to say that after the first twenty minutes Quicksilver is put into a coma until the last five minutes of the movie, so his storyline is never properly resolved. Tye’s Cyclops is still a whiny bitch. You’d think after years of fan complaints on how Cyclops has been portrayed on screen that they’d at least try to switch it up. And Kodi Smit-McPhee’s Nightcrawler comes to realize he’s okay with killing in the third act despite there being no set-up for this at all. I’ll give Dark Phoenix this, at least this is the first X-Men movie to feel like a team movie with everyone working together and using their powers together. For the comic fans out there, Dazzler makes an appearance. For those of you who don’t know who Dazzler is, the scene she’s in is goofy and obvious fan service.


Simon convinced Hans Zimmer to come out of retirement for scoring comic book movies to score this. This is perhaps Zimmer’s most uninspired score I’ve ever heard. Nothing here sounds good. When talking to a couple of colleagues, they were both shocked that this was a Zimmer score. One said the film was overscored and yeah it was. I was shocked by how bland it sounded.

So for those of you wondering how was the directing debut of the writer of xXX: State of the Union? Well, it’s certainly better than what Bryan Singer did on Apocalypse, but it’s still shoddy. The action is flat with very little excitement. There are two major set pieces here with the space rescue mission and the reshot third act train sequence. Let me say that the space sequence has a very goofy eye cannon for Cyclops to use. You can tell this is someone’s first feature as the movie is overedited and some scenes that need to breathe aren’t really allowed to.

Simon has been writing for the X-Men franchise since The Last Stand. The best one he’s touched has been Days of Future Past mainly as he’s working from a script that Matthew Vaugh and his writing partner worked on vigorously before leaving the franchise. All of the hallmarks of his writing are here. There is a lot of bad dialogue including the one PG-13 use of fuck uttered by Cyclops and it is unintentionally hilarious. However, the film’s biggest sin is doing this storyline right after we’ve been just introduced to the younger versions of these characters taken the emotional weight that this is supposed to have and throwing it out of the window.

Hopefully, Disney put the X-Men on a ten-year hiatus. Five at the shortest and when the mutants are introduced into the MCU, hopefully, time is taken to do “The Phoenix Saga” properly before jumping directly into “The Dark Phoenix Saga”. The way this film wraps up in the last five minutes reeks of reshoots after the Disney merger. Most of it lazy and doesn’t make sense in the slightest. But hey that’s been the X-Men franchise since The Last Stand. What makes this worst is that this film’s ending retcons the best film in this franchise, Logan. Take that as you will

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