Dir; Simon Kinberg. Starring; Sophie Turner, James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence. PG-13. Color. 113 min.
Opinions change. Life continually shapes the mind. There is one constant and that is embarrassment. You say that you do not have a favorite parent or child, but you do. You say as a filmmaker you are proud of everything that has been created out of your hard work, but you are lying. The title of “Dark Phoenix” alone, excluding the X-Men title, tells filmgoers all they need to know. Hollywood is very transparent historically of what is and is not good, even though they try to cover it up for box office results.
“Dark Phoenix” is almost as big of a train wreck as the final action sequence, pun intended. Director Simon Kinberg is essentially asleep throughout this long delayed installment and expects the audience to enjoy non-sensical boom-booms without thinking. Shall we find the proverbial “Phoenix” if you will? Probably not. Spoiler alerts;
Sophie Turner returns as the powerful telepath Jean Grey. We open with a young Jean killing her parents, allegedly. Cut to years later and everything is going well for the X-Men as they are now suddenly superstars and beloved the world over. Jean is happy in her new role at the Xavier school. The current 1992 president calls Professor X (James Macavoy) on a phone literally labeled X, similar to the 1960’s “Batman” show, to save some astronauts after a botched NASA space mission. Whom else does one call other than the characters you tried to obliterate in the previous films. Ah, ok. Apparently the X-Men have the ability, in 1992, to head off into space. This worked much better as a children’s cartoon.
A NASA launcher space craft is in trouble because of some weird anomaly that appears out of nowhere, as space anomaly’s do. The blue teleport specialist Nightcrawler is able to save the crew of the NASA ship thanks to a helmet and finely placed duct tape. Why didn’t NASA think of that? Would have saved so much government money on space suits. Everyone survives because Jean absorbed all of the power from the space anomaly. She does somehow survive. Does not make sense to me either. Moving on.
This is the point where “Dark Phoenix” just gets weird.
Apparently this alien race had its planet destroyed and the best option was to go from planet to planet in hopes of finding a being that can take the heat, if you will, and strike gold with Jean Grey’s abilities as a mutant. Their next plan is to take over bodies such as a rich woman hosting a dinner party played by Jessica Chastain. Naturally the first place one goes when invading a world is a rich white person’s estate for evening drinks.
After Jean Grey goes emo with her new power and kills one of her friends she is depressed and crying in some random alley while it rains. Who doesn’t choose that type of local when depressed? She seeks out an old mutant buddy in Magneto (Michael Fassbender) whom is running a make shift hippy factory for mutants which includes a new character that can use his dread locks as deadly weapons. Ah, ok. Meanwhile, Chastain’s character, now called Vuk, begins a journey to suck the Phoenix powers away from Jean in hopes of gaining ultimate invincibility.
Look, “Dark Phoenix” is not the ultimate awful when it comes to X-Men films, but it’s pretty damn close. “X-Men: Apocalypse” and “X-Men: The Last Stand” barely edge this one out. Oh yeah, let’s not forget “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” as well. But this movie is a train wreck from start to finish. What a waste of talent. It almost feels like the particular famous actor/actress whom dies early begged to be killed off so they would not have to be on set anymore. Talk about a paycheck movie for all involved.
Advertisements claim this is the end of the X-Men saga. Bullshit. Marvel will do it again and hopefully better. If you want to talk about how to go out in the bottom of the barrel, look no further than “Dark Phoenix”. Hopefully the next iteration of the mutant story will rise out of the ashes and give us a phoenix worth seeing. But for now we must settle for James MacAvoy rubbing his head wondering why he and everyone else are in this nonsense.
Suck Factor: 6 out of 7 (7 means your movie really SUCKS!)
Written by Byrd
The SUCK FACTOR, how it works. We have flipped the rating system upside down. If a film is classic, it gets a 0. Meaning that movie has 0 SUCKS. If a film is complete trash you must avoid at all costs, it gets a 7, meaning this movie really SUCKS!
Greg Squared Films 