X-Men: Dark Phoenix

Dir: Simon Kinberg

2019

**

An unremarkable ending to a series that was two films too long. I liked First Class but the re-boot series really found its feet in Days of Future Past. Unfortunately the two films since have been a huge departure from quality, I thought Apocalypse was bad but Dark Phoenix was an exercise in mediocrity and had a distinct lack of creativity. I was weary of First Class at first as I didn’t think the franchise needed a reboot so soon but, like most people, I liked it. Days of Future Past however was ingenious, it didn’t need to incorporate the cast of the previous series because of the impact of the first film but it did because the story was so clever. It brought all doubts of the reboot to an end. I have to admit I had to pause a few times to work out timelines, who was who and where was where but it was worth it because it was clever and fun. The problem was however that they just couldn’t top it,  Apocalypse fell short and incorporated poor ideas. It was far too simple, superhero story lines had moved on from that sort of thing long ago. Lessons have not been learned though, and Dark Phoenix is just a rehash of The Last Stand. The Last Stand was the weakest of the original trilogy, the worst story to reboot, even though the comic series was pretty good. Dark Phoenix makes The Last Stand look like a masterpiece. The integrity of each character has been lost. I do find it hard to keep up with the X-Men movies, especially when they are rather uninteresting but each character has been established and in Dark Phoenix each character looks like a shell of their former selves. I say characters, but what it actually looks like is a group of actors who have lost their enthusiasm for the series and each performance feels lethargic. It is clear this is the end of the road for the series but instead of going out with a bang they’ve decided to simply comply with contractual compliance, get it done, stick it out there and move on. There is no fanfare whatsoever but then I’m not sure anybody cares. When Jennifer Lawrence’s raven/ Mystique is (predictably) killed early on in the movie, I didn’t weep for her character, it didn’t move me. In fact I was happy, I thought to myself great, finally Jennifer Lawrence, you are free of all your franchises, go off and make wonderful independent films and don’t go signing any more multi-film contracts. The studio couldn’t even be bothered to give the film to a director who had directed a film before. The Dark Phoenix comic series is strong and The Last Stand was a poor adaptation of it but my goodness, 2019’s Dark Phoenix is mind-numbingly boring. Even the non-comic reading viewers could see what was going to happen, perhaps and obvious thing to say, but one would have hoped for a few surprises along the way, a twist here and a revelation there, but there was nothing. Nothing of interest and nothing of substance, just a bit of fighting here and there. Many of the fan-favourite X-men were missing and the film’s villain was probably the least villainous in the history of cinema. Jessica Chastain, a phenomenal actor, in a white wig. Everyone likes an easy day in the office but seriously, what was that? The excuse that the events of The Last Stand never happened because of the change in the timeline is a tired excuse also – look what happened to Star Trek and the Wrath of Khan 2 (AKA Into Darkness). If every sci-fi franchise rooted itself and made a different version of something it had already made the’d be nothing for a nerd like me to believe in anymore. It killed Star Trek for me and Star Wars is going the same way, thanks to its overuse of nostalgia (basically copying everything from the old movies). That said, it has never been as blatant as it is here, even more so than Into Darkness. This is obviously even more ridiculous given that The Last Stand is so much better. The Last Stand had real emotion attached to it while Dark Phoenix simply relies on the viewer feeling the same way towards the newer characters than the way they did with the same characters played by the original cast. I’m sorry but I still don’t see Tye Sheridan as Cyclops or Sophie Turner as Jean Grey, this is only their second film as those characters and they haven’t been given enough development for me to be emotionally invested in them whatsoever. The new X-men also sucked, especially Ariki, whose mutant power is to flick people with his stinky dreadlocks. The bad-guy aliens were a poor man’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers understudy group, not scary and not even threatening. I liked the train heist scene but only because I like train heists but apart from that there was nothing here for me. There was no sense of suspense, no thrill, no emotion and absolutely zero energy. I couldn’t have cared less about the characters or what happened to them. Worse still, it looked as though all the original cast members of First Class felt the same way. Now that X-Men have been bought by Disney they need to look long and hard at what they’re going to do with them, either way I feel it needs to be drastically different and that they should give it a few years before trying. Then they should call Grant Morrison.