A Dark Day: X-Men Dark Phoenix Review

When most people think of Marvel, they think of Avengers: Endgame and Iron Man. However, Marvel also created the X-Men and Fantastic-Four movies.

Dark Phoenix will be the twelfth X-Men movie in the X-Men extended universe. And right off the bat, I’ll tell you it wasn’t very good. The movie centers around Jean Grey (Sophie Turner), a core figure in the X-Men. When a space mission goes wrong, Jean absorbs a dark magical power, which enhances her powers and make them uncontrollable. She goes on a rampage and brings the X-Men to the brink of a civil war (sound familiar?). If that wasn’t enough, we also have an obligatory alien invasion, where the Aliens, led by Smith (Jessica Chastain), try to convince Jean to “turn to the dark side.” With a star-studded cast, Dark Phoenix had the potential to not be that bad, but turned out disappointingly below-average.  

The acting in the movie hopefully shouldn’t be on anyone’s resume after this film, with the exception of Magneto (Michael Fassbender). That one scene where he confronts a certain character—no spoilers—and asks some very intense questions is remarkably earnest. Sophie Turner basically says 12 variations of the line “I don’t know what’s happening to me” and does what she can, but it isn’t sufficient. The rest of the X-Men (Wolverine doesn’t count) are simply there, and really only move the plot along.

The only good part of the movie was the special effects. Cars exploding, magic powers flying, and a runaway train finale scene were all pretty impressive. Too bad the movie wasn’t great, because I wouldn’t have counted it out to win an Oscar for best SFX.  

I don’t think this movie was the proper send off for the X-Men series, but I wouldn’t mind if it was. The final battle on a off-the-rails train going nowhere finale scene is, ironically, a perfect metaphor for the latter part of the X-Men series. In the end, Dark Phoenix won’t win any awards, but it’s one of those movies you buy on Amazon Prime, start watching, be amazed by the cool fights, and then fall asleep halfway through because you started a movie at 11 o’clock on a school night. It’s a movie like Godzilla. You don’t watch it for the plot, you watch it for the big monster fights, or in this case, a superhuman-action-packed superhero movie.