What happened?
When Fox rebooted the X-Men series with First Class they almost (almost) made up for the atrocity that was X-Men Origins: Wolverine. After years of sub par sequels never coming close to the height of X2, they had finally corrected course and delivered one of the best movies in the entire series. It brought new life into the series, something Sony tried and failed to do with The Amazing Spiderman. The best part was Fox was able to use this new momentum and make an even better movie with Days of Future Past, perfectly combining the original and new actors across multiple timelines. We got to see old characters in a new light with versions of themselves we’ve never seen before. As superhero movies go, they did the practically impossible and revived the series which had essentially become a huge train wreck.
To my disappointment (although I blame this partly on myself for not expecting it) it couldn’t last. X-Men Apocalypse introduced even more versions of beloved X-Men characters (Jean Grey, Storm, Cyclops!) with in demand up and coming actors (Oscar Isaac coming off Star Wars, Sophie Turner at the height of GOT fame) yet the film fell completely flat. The movie wasn’t technically bad, it was just…boring (which some might say is even worse). Going in to Dark Phoenix, however, I still had hope. Fox completely botched the Phoenix saga the first time around so I figured there was no way they would let it happen again. Assuming you’ve read the previous two paragraphs, I think you know where I’m going with this.
Similar to Apocalypse, this movie wasn’t bad. The dialogue wasn’t too cheesy, the acting was good, the fight scenes were intricate. I just didn’t care about what was happening. The villains (if you can really call them that) were a random alien race that we knew nothing about. They weren’t even given a name, or if they were it was subtle enough that I completely missed it. We knew next to nothing about them and the things we did find out were revealed so late that I didn’t even care.
The biggest misstep of all was how Jean’s story was told. After consuming the Phoenix force, she seems fine but then loses control of her powers at a party that night and blacks out. Through this one incident she falls into the “I can’t be here, I’ll just hurt everyone” clice that could hold up a lot better if she did more than slightly bruise Scott. Then the X-Men find her at her supposedly dead father’s house where as we all know from the trailers… kills Mystique. Then she has the “I need to leave because I hurt everyone” cliche but as this is the second time they’ve pulled that in 15 minutes it doesn’t really have much of an impact. From there on the story is the tried and true villain convinces Jean (way too easily) they can help her, her friends turning on her way too quickly, and the in-team blame game that doesn’t really make too much sense.
After 5 hours (the official run time is 1hr 54m but after sitting through this movie I can confirm that is not an accurate representation of what it felt like) we finally get to the final battle which actually had a ton of cool moments. Each character’s powers were on full display with Nighcrawler especially getting some good moments. After some gruesome kills from Magneto, Jean who is apparently consumed by the force that created the universe is let loose and she… evaporates? Seriously, that’s it. That’s how it ends.
With the superhero craze still in full swing and Avengers:Endgame inching closer to Avatar’s all time box office record there’s no reason this movie should be on track to lose $100 million dollars. They had everything going for it and for some reason couldn’t make it work. It’s actually impressive that Fox was able to ruin this franchise not once but twice. Now that Disney has all the rights back maybe Marvel can resurrect this franchise for a third time. Until then, I’ll still be asking myself: what happened?
Couch Potato 