Dark Phoenix review!

Alright! Dark Phoenix time! Supposedly the worst X-Men movie and one of the biggest flops of 2019... let's dig in.

First off, this review is so late because I didn't care enough to see it in theaters. The reviews were bad, it looked bad, I figured out the plot, it just wasn't intriguing. So, here I am. It is now on Redbox, so I saw it. 

And it's actually pretty good.

You have to understand, for it to be "The worst X-Men movie" it has to be worse than X-Men Origins: Wolverine. And that's a ridiculously low bar.

But, the film actually has a couple of fundamental things wrong with it: 

1. Charles Xavier, Magneto, Mystique, and Beast are all in their 50s but are played by people in their 30s

Yes. This is a problem. Once again, they jump a decade (For literally no reason), and this means that Magneto, who was in the holocaust, is, like, 60. Same for Charles, Beast, and Mystique. And, yes, they played with the timeline, but that doesn't mean this is acceptable. 

This is literally 8 years later. This does not happen.

2. Captain Marvel

In the film, there are aliens called the D'Bari which are shape-shifting aliens who want to take over Earth after their planet is destroyed. Sound familiar? 

It's the Skrulls from Captain Marvel. This similarity, along with the climax where the Phoenix would've flown around in space and destroyed their ships, was reshot to be in a train. 

Now, the train is arguably cooler, and is basically the best sequence of the film. But this reshoot is a very unfortunate mishap.

And, Jean Grey in her flying glowy form looks suspiciously like Captain Marvel. Like, a lot. Like, I saw it, and I thought, "Whoah! Captain Marvel!"

3. Some misplaced femism

Dark Phoenix is subject to extremely misplaced feminism, so watch the clip.

Good.

The dialogue is pretty cool. I love the idea that the X-Men only function to keep the peace between Mutants and Homosapiens. That is a very clever reason, and rather depressing.

But then... notice that Raven actually tells Charles (2:09), "I actually can't remember the last time you were the one risking something." this line is awful. Like, really bad. Like, really, really bad. The man is LITERALLY IN A WHEELCHAIR. Because he prevented a Nuclear War. And, in that same scene, she leaves him, paralyzed, on a beach.

And then it gets worse! At 2:15, she says, "And by the way, the women are always saving the men around here. You might want to change the name to X-Women." And this line is even worse. Because equality does not work by putting other people down.

It's the reverse of the Deadpool 2 "X-Force" joke

AND, in Days of Future Past, Wolverine actually goes back in time to save Peter Dinklage, who Mystique is trying to kill! And, in Apocalypse, Quicksilver literally saves everyone from the exploding mansion, including Mystique. AND, in the scene prior, it's Quicksilver and Nightcrawler who save the stranded astronauts, not Mystique. Mystique watches from the ship and does nothing. 

It's actually painful.

And it made her death a lot less sad. I was actually glad, just because the "Cringe SJW" alert would die.

4. It does not have a funny Quicksilver scene.

A lot of Dark Phoenix's problems would easily have been solved by Quicksilver, so they take him out early in the movie.
At that point, why not just kill him?
And, it let the entire "I'm his son" reveal from the Apocalypse die. Imagine if he had told Magneto that in Apocalypse and then Jean killed him. That would've made Magneto go crazy, and explain why he wasn't in the OT.

But yeah. This really needed a funny scene.

In fact, the entire movie is unfunny. There's a lot of clever dialogue, but not a lot of funny dialogue. It didn't need to be so dramatic.

5. The movie has basically no swearing

This is actually a pretty cool thing. It doesn't have a lot of swearing. It doesn't need it. But, in last third of the movie, Cyclops randomly drops the F-Bomb. It's really weird. It's, like, the second swear in the movie, and it's the F-Bomb? It was really out of place. However, it was the closest Scott came to a personality other than "Jean's boyfriend."

Now, these are some seriously wrong things. But, the movie is still good.

It has a lot of clever dialogue about why the X-Men function, and one of my favorite X-Men lines ever: "Your always sorry, Charles. And there's always a speech. And nobody cares." That was such a boss moment. 

I also thought the fight scenes were cool. The CGI was occasionally flaky, but overall it was good. 

Another thing wrong with the film is that it puts Mystique's death in the trailer. But then doesn't kill anyone else off. It was weird.

Another thing they did weird was Cyclops. Now that Wolverine's gone, we got a bigger Cyclops role. The leader of the X-Men. And he is still "Just" Jean's boyfriend. He's more than that. C'mon.

They also don't really develop Storm or Nightcrawler. Both are cool in the film, but barely have any speaking lines.


One thing the film did better than all the other X-Men films are the costumes. They look awesome. In the OT, they're leather with yellow lining, in Apocalypse they're bulky, but in this one? In this one they're super nice, comfy looking, and uniformly.

I did like the film overall. It was pretty short, so it didn't really drag. 

As a conclusion to the X-Men saga, it was disappointing. It doesn't end the franchise. It doesn't resolve the public's reactions to the damage they did in the climax. It barely, if at all, references the previous films, which is really bad. 

But as a film? 

As a film it was alright.

Overall opinion: 7/10, "While Dark Phoenix is a disappointing finale to the beloved franchise, it is a good movie nonetheless."