X‑Men: Dark Phoenix

While the movies of Mar­vel Stu­dios are known for their treat­ment of com­ic books as scrip­ture, over its near­ly 20 year long tenure the X‑Men movies have shown a slight­ly dif­fer­ent type of faith – by twist­ing its time­line into a pret­zel to rival its fore­bears. After a num­ber of Wolver­ine-based pre­quels, sequels, then reboot-quels mixed with sequels, it has become dif­fi­cult to track the arc of these films as they con­tin­u­al­ly remix their time­line. Though 2014’s Days of Future Past played with time-trav­el, Dark Phoenix is tru­ly the snake eat­ing its own tail, with writer/​director Simon Kin­berg retread­ing the same ground that he did a decade ago when writ­ing Brett Ratner’s X‑Men: The Last Stand.

As that last film did, Dark Phoenix adapts Chris Clare­mont and John Byrne’s ​‘Dark Phoenix Saga’, the sto­ry of young mutant telepath Jean Grey (Sophie Turn­er) becom­ing fused with the Phoenix Force, a cos­mic enti­ty of fear­some pow­er and dark impuls­es. The film keeps the stakes root­ed in Jean’s emo­tion­al state, fram­ing every­thing around a trau­mat­ic inci­dent that she caused as a child, shown in the open­ing. It ties this in with Charles Xavier (James McAvoy), benev­o­lent founder of the X‑Men, slip­ping into ego­tism as the mutants find them­selves beloved by all, com­plete with a direct line to the president.

As with the oth­er films in this quadrilo­gy, it’s inter­est­ing to see McAvoy bring some new shad­ing to this char­ac­ter. The old­er char­ac­ters like Mys­tique (Jen­nifer Lawrence, ful­fill­ing her con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tions) hold Xavier direct­ly respon­si­ble for Jean’s per­son­al­i­ty shift as a result of med­dling with her mind in her youth. It’s sat­is­fy­ing, but the script push­es too hard to make the audi­ence see her desire and anger as some­thing that is actu­al­ly dan­ger­ous, espe­cial­ly when com­pared with the mass mur­der that Michael Fassbender’s Mag­ne­to was for­giv­en for com­mit­ting just one film ago.

When Jean final­ly does cross the line, Dark Phoenix demands con­cern about the puri­ty of her soul, but so lit­tle time has been spent with the char­ac­ter that it’s unclear what Jean’s nor­mal self even is. Although Turner’s per­for­mance is sol­id in por­tray­ing Jean’s con­fu­sion and rage (despite a shaky accent), it’s dif­fi­cult to actu­al­ly know her. In fact, it’s dif­fi­cult to real­ly know what any of this iter­a­tion of the X‑Men are like.

At least Turn­er is afford­ed some time to put her stamp on the char­ac­ter, as new ver­sions of Storm (Alexan­dra Shipp) and Night­crawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee) bare­ly get any atten­tion, let alone any inte­ri­or­i­ty. Sheridan’s Cyclops is in tur­moil over Jean’s suf­fer­ing, but that’s the most of it. Quick­sil­ver (Evan Peters), con­sid­ered as a stand­out of the past cou­ple of movies, most­ly stays side­lined. As in 2016’s Apoc­a­lypse, it’s as though the audi­ence is expect­ed to be grate­ful that they are see­ing most of the clas­sic line-up of char­ac­ters, with­out explor­ing what makes them interesting.

To Kinberg’s cred­it, he stays true to his word in that Dark Phoenix feels based in the real world, with a renewed focus on small­er set pieces and more tan­gi­ble action. But, while it’s a step up from the VFX haze of Apoc­a­lypse, there’s still plen­ty of weight­less CGI goop to go around. The pow­er of the Phoenix Force feels bland, as ulti­mate pow­er is still rep­re­sent­ed by every­thing in the imme­di­ate vicin­i­ty dis­in­te­grat­ing. It doesn’t help either that the mutant may­hem fre­quent­ly involves bizarre and some­times hys­ter­i­cal­ly fun­ny use of wire­work, which under­mines the bet­ter moments of super-pow­ered action, most of which hap­pen in the final act. Any joy at a clever use of Cyclops’ laser beams will often find itself cut short by a weird shot of Mag­ne­to float­ing from the back­ground into the foreground.

As for the over­all look of the film, Dark Phoenix seems com­plete­ly unin­ter­est­ed in the chance to do any­thing sig­nif­i­cant with this film’s time peri­od out­side of some nee­dle drops. Con­sid­er­ing that we have already had one film this year set in the ​’90s and fea­tur­ing a race of shapeshift­ing aliens lever­ag­ing a woman’s cos­mic pow­er, lean­ing into nos­tal­gia may have been a good choice. But with a refusal to try a new aes­thet­ic or embrace the weird­ness of its source mate­r­i­al, what’s left is a cold approx­i­ma­tion of an X‑Men film. It all feels like well-trod­den ground, from Hans Zimmer’s place­hold­er score to the long, red leather jack­et that also sym­bol­ised Jean’s turn to the dark side in The Last Stand.

Instead of hav­ing the team reck­on with the cul­pa­bil­i­ty of one of their own for some­thing atro­cious, or hav­ing Jean Grey strug­gle with her loss of agency, Dark Phoenix set­tles for some­thing neater and less chal­leng­ing. It feels half-heart­ed in its pur­suit of a dark­er, edgi­er movie, while it may be bloody and ​“dark”, it’s hes­i­tant to have messy con­se­quences. But while Dark Phoenix may have few­er embar­rass­ing mis­steps than Ratner’s 2006 dis­as­ter, it replaces that embar­rass­ment with some­thing that feels devoid of personality.

The bright yel­low cos­tumes, ripped straight out of Grant Mor­ri­son and Frank Quitely’s loopy New X‑Men run may be there, but the cre­ativ­i­ty and strange­ness isn’t. It’s for this rea­son that Dark Phoenix feels unsat­is­fy­ing, both in iso­la­tion, and as a final chap­ter in this saga of the X‑Men.