Dark Phoenix Review :: Dark Phoenix brings the X-Men cycle to an end

20th Century Fox

Okay, I will give you some full disclosure here — I have no prior knowledge of the Jean Grey/Dark Phoenix storyline from the famed comics storyline. Of course I did my digging on Wikipedia to compare the two stories and let’s just say anyone who knows and loves the original story should expect something only vaguely resembling that. The set-up is there but everything beyond that is quite different.

The set-up: In 1975, young Jean Grey is in a horrific car accident that kills her parents (or so she thinks) but her remarkable, unscathed condition has prompted someone to contact Charles Xavier who offers her a home at his school for special children like her. She reluctantly accepts, but says he can’t fix her to which he replies, ‘You’re not broken.’ Flash forward to 1992, mutants are accepted in society through the efforts of Xavier proving that his ‘X-Men’ are what the planet needs. And they are needed now as the space shuttle Endeavor has experienced a catastrophic event in space with a rapicly approaching solar flare about to consume the craft. It’s the X-Men to the rescue under the leadership of Cyclops and Raven, with a reticent Jean Grey along for the ride. Jean can read minds and knows that no one is completely comfortable with another of Xavier’s reckless missions that seem more to pump up his ego (at least that’s what Raven thinks).

The mission to save the astronauts is a success but Jean absorbs the full brunt of the ‘solar flare’ that begins to manifest itself within her in dangerous ways. After injruing some of her fellow X-Men at a party, she then learns her father is still alive, feeling betrayed now by him and Charles after searching Charles’ mind for answers. The encounter with her father takes a twist when a spooky, blonde Jessica Chastain walks in to assure Jean that she is there to help. What Jean doesn’t know is that the woman she sees before her is actually an alien from the D’Bari race named Vuk that has taken the shape of the human woman it killed. The D’Bari have been living among humans but they are dying out, and they want to use Jean’s powers to eliminate the humans so the rest of their people can claim Earth as their new home. And, it turns out, the ‘solar flare’ was some entity that travels through space consuming everything in its path, including the D’Bari homeworld. Jean seeks helps from Erik Lehnsherr, now with his group of mutants on the island of Genosha, but when the military comes calling for her and disrupts their home, Erik demands that she leave them. With no one else to turn to, Vuk seems her best option leading Charles to rally his usual band of X-Men and Erik and some of his crew to save Jean and defeat the D’Bari.

Now … I am going to have the very unpopular opinion here and admit that I enjoyed Dark Phoenix. Was it great? No. It’s light years better than X-Men: Apocalypse. Was it entertaining? Yes. Did it have great production value, special effects and action setpieces? Definitely. It also has some wonderful performances from James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Tye Sheridan and Michael Fassbender, and Sophie Turner does a fine job but occasionally her delivery is a bit monotone.

The first half of the movie is actually quite good. The car accident is as horrific as it should be, the moments with Charles and young Jean are heartening, and the encounter with her father when she learns the truth about what happened after the accident is dramatic which leads to a shocking showdown with the X-Men and a surprising, but not totally unexpected death of a major character (and with this being the last movie in the 20th Century Fox X-Men cycle, they’ll never have to worry about retconning the story to explain how that character is still alive in the original X-Men trilogy). That death is what actually propels the rest of the story as everyone of the main characters has to deal with it and not take their gried out on Jean, whom Charles keeps reminding them is not the Jean they all know and love. So there is some emotional weight to the story.

But that’s also where it falls short in the second half as the movie then becomes one long action scene as the X-Men and Erik’s group fight the D’Bari to get their Jean back. While the battles on a train and within the city are impressive, the movie loses its heart and it just feels like something is missing to give it that truly emotional payoff that the story and the fans deserve. And with a run time that it just under two hours, the movie still felt much shorter. I thought it was 90 minutes. This story, done properly, really could have been a two-parter like the last two Avengers movies (and perhaps they could have stuck closer to the original story had they done so).

But even with the spectacle and the performances, the real standout of the movie was Hans Zimmer’s score. I can’t properly describe it but it played pretty much throughout the entire movie but it never got overly bombastic during the action scenes. And while there is no post-credits scene — as expected (although it would have been nice to have a tease for New Mutants) — it was enough to sit through the credits just to listen to the music. So, not a great X-Men movie, but certainly not the worst. It’s just a shame that they couldn’t find that little bit extra to push the film over the top. What the future holds for the X-Men movies now is a great unknown as Disney takes the reins, but Dark Phoenix is not the worst way the series could have ended. I know many people will disagree, but that’s just one person’s opinion (Rotten Tomatoes be damned). Hey, and if nothing else, I believe this is the first X-Men movie to drop an F-bomb.

Dark Phoenix has a run time of 1 hour 53 minutes and is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action including some gunplay, disturbing images, and brief strong language.