The X-Men universe has seen its fair share of high and low points. The series has regularly jumped from greatness down to atrocity and everywhere in between, giving it a reputation as one of the most volatile film franchises.
Excluded from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)—due to its film rights having been sold from the financially-suffering Marvel Comics to 20th Century Fox in the 1990s—the X-Men series has run since 2000, yielding 12 films.
The latest one, Dark Phoenix, was released June 7 and is among the absolute worst pictures of the franchise.
Where did it all go wrong? The first film of the series, eponymously titled X-Men, was a rousing success. It sent the career of Hugh Jackman skyrocketing and kickstarted the superhero film craze that would continue building towards the heights of the MCU of today with the release of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man in 2002.
But 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand—directed by Brett Ratner and scripted by Simon Kinberg and Zak Penn—received a “rotten” 57 per cent rating on aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Much of the criticism focused on the screenplay’s insistence upon shoving the legendary “Dark Phoenix saga” story aside in favour of a less thrilling “mutant cure” narrative.
Furthermore, after an impressive opening weekend, The Last Stand suffered at theatres compared to its fellow films in the X-Men franchise, earning back just 218 per cent of its production budget at the worldwide box office, ranking last for budget-to-return among the first 11 films
However, with The Last Stand’s events wiped off the timeline by the 2014 time-travel film X-Men: Days of Future Past, Fox decided to give Kinberg another shot at adapting the storyline—this time, from the director’s chair. So became Dark Phoenix, marketed as a conclusion to this 19-year-long Fox saga of X-Men films.
Dark Phoenix follows Jean Grey—played by Sophie Turner (Game of Thrones)—a telepathic member of the X-Men, whose powers are enhanced during an interstellar encounter with a mysterious cosmic force. Grey absorbs this force and is immediately pursued by a villainous shape-shifting alien called Vux—played by Jessica Chastain (The Martian)—who wishes to control the power inside Grey.
The film also stars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Tye Sheridan and Evan Peters; all reprising their roles from previous X-Men films. None of them seem too interested in being here, but who can blame them with dialogue as poor as they are given? Kinberg’s screenwriting skills seem to have deteriorated since the release of The Last Stand, with many of Chastain’s lines in particular feeling predictable and clichéd.
McAvoy and Fassbender, as Professor X and Magneto, are naturally charismatic actors who could make a pop-up ad seem compelling.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Turner, whose role as Grey is vastly expanded from that in her debut turn in X-Men: Apocalypse (2016). Inheriting a role made famous by Famke Janssen in the original X-Men trilogy, Turner feels wooden and mis-cast here.
While the boring script does nobody any favours, her acting talent particularly pales in comparison to those around her.
Lawrence, an Oscar-winning actress, is phoning it in so hard here that her data coverage bill will be off-the-charts. She clearly became too big for these films six years ago, and it’s clear that with her increased stardom came substantially decreased interest in this franchise.
Further off-putting about her role is that her character, Mystique, is supposed to be in her 50s. Lawrence is 28 and looks like she hasn’t aged a day since X-Men: First Class came out in 2011.
The other members of the superhero team are cast almost completely aside. Peters’s Quicksilver, a breakout surprise of 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past with his breathtaking slow-motion sequences, is rendered totally useless in this film after being incapacitated early in the runtime.
Storm, played by Alexandra Shipp, continues her tradition of underuse initiated in the earliest X-Men films, back when she was Halle Berry’s character. Chastain’s Vux is miserably underdeveloped, almost as if her character was solely conceived to deliver somewhat menacing lines to pad out a trailer.
In many cases, Kinberg’s idea of direction seems to have been to use his first take. Perhaps that would explain the millions of dollars spent on reshoots, which seem to have helped very little. The faults with this film extend much further than direction and acting, instead originating in the overarching sense of apathy surrounding this franchise.
With the Fox/Disney merger looming and a seemingly inevitable MCU reboot of the X-Men coming, Dark Phoenix feels like a contract-mandated conclusion, not a satisfying crescendo. It suffers from scatterbrained plotting, disinterested acting, a distractingly awful score from Hans Zimmer and a brutal script that somehow fails where The Last Stand succeeded.
Instead of watching Dark Phoenix, it may be more entertaining to Google actual pictures of Arizona at dusk.
Editor’s note: This film review previously stated that the film received “lukewarm” box office returns. The piece has been edited to exclude that statement.
Graphic by Tim Austen
