20th Century Fox
Review by Curt Holman
It’s been 19 years since the 2000 release of X-Men and the June 7, 2019 release of Dark Phoenix, the 12th film in the franchise of Marvel mutant superheroes. Things have changed in almost two decades: When the first X-Men came out, Bill Clinton was still the U.S. president, George Clooney was the most recent movie star to play Batman, and Sophie Turner, Dark Phoenix’s lead actor, was 3 years old.
The X-Men series has been running so long, with such a haphazard continuity, that the series has granted itself do-overs. X-Men Origins: Wolverine presented Deadpool as a mouthless, shirtless, overpowered goon, but his solo film reintroduced the “merc with a mouth” as the madcap killer that made him popular in the first place. Dark Phoenix takes another stab at the comic series’ most famous storyline, The Dark Phoenix Saga, which provided plot points for the bloated third film, X-Men: The Last Stand.
Written and directed by Simon Kinberg, Dark Phoenix tries to put more focus on the characters and their conflicts, but somehow still isn’t even as good as The Last Stand, and The Last Stand was pretty crummy. Drab, perfunctory and cheap-looking, Dark Phoenix ends the X-Men film series (at least as a 20th Century Fox property) on the weakest note imaginable.
The film takes place in 1992, with Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and his school for gifted youngsters enjoying public support for a change. When an extraterrestrial anomaly threatens a space shuttle mission, the X-Men, led by Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), blast into orbit to help. But in saving the astronauts, telekinetic Jean Grey (Turner) is attacked by the alien cloud, which comics readers will recognize as the wildly destructive Phoenix Force.
The close encounter causes Jean’s psychic powers to significantly level up, which leads to uncontrollable super-powered outbursts. She’s also able to discover and eliminate old mental barriers Charles put up to protect young Jean from traumatic memories. Perhaps Dark Phoenix’s best idea is the characters’ willingness to criticize Charles for using mind control without other people’s consent, despite his good intentions.
A confrontation between Jean and the X-Men results in tragedy, further alienating Jean from the team and motivating Hank “Beast” McCoy (Nicholas Hoult) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) against her. The Dark Phoenix Saga found plenty of melodrama in the heroes’ struggle against one of their own turned evil and wrestling with how to hold her accountable for her actions. This concept feels as watered down here as it did in Last Stand.
The new film introduces a group of shapeshifting aliens who infiltrate Earth with plans for the Phoenix Force. Jessica Chastain wanly plays their leader, who’s credited with the name Vuk (yes, Vuk). The aliens provide some handy exposition for the Phoenix Force’s outer-space origins as well as a train fight that’s one of the film’s few signs of life. Their inclusion is otherwise a ruinous choice, detracting from characters we (theoretically) care about for ones far too vague to be compelling.
Through its handling of Jean, Mystique and Vux, Dark Phoenix flirts with some feminist ideas, such as a man trying to justify his attempt to control a female character and women arguing for their independence. Mystique even points out that the women on the team take some of the biggest risks, even though the team is called the X-Men. But it all comes across as a half-baked take on themes better explored a few months ago in Captain Marvel (which, coincidentally, was also set in the 1990s).
Part of the problem is that Jean’s personality remains rather sketchy. Just who is she, really? We don’t know her very well before the Phoenix Force and the unlocked memories come into play, so it’s not clear what she wants or how she’s changing. At least Turner does her best to capture the complexity of Jean’s feelings, even while the script seems uncertain about them.
Fassbender and McAvoy are charismatic enough to remain compelling performers, but Lawrence seems bored and unengaged. Tye Sheridan, as Scott “Cyclops” Summers, comes across as a kid in over his head. But the terrible production values bring everything down–it looks more like the pilot episode of a superhero show on a new streaming service than the latest entry in a profitable film franchise.
If you get bored during Dark Phoenix–and you probably will—you can crunch the numbers regarding the chronology of the recent X-films and the characters’ ages. Fassbender plays a Holocaust survivor who should be in his 60s here, with Hank and Mystique in their 50s. In X-Men: Apocalypse, Jean and her classmates were teenagers seeing Return of the Jedi in 1983. Nine years later, are they old enough to drink? Are they taking classes, or teaching them?
Since Disney acquired 20th Century Fox, social media has chattered about the idea of the X-Men joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But can you look at their recent movies and say you really want that? Is there anything left to say about, say, Magneto, even with the Avengers around? With the likes of Hugh Jackman unlikely to reprise their roles, do you want new actors playing Wolverine and company?
Dark Phoenix suggests it’s time to borrow a phrase from the X-Men House of M storyline and apply it to the movies, at least in the short-term: “No more mutants.”
Dark Phoenix. D. Written and directed by Simon Kinberg. Starring Sophie Turner, Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy. Rated PG-13.