Dark Phoenix review

So I know what your first question is going to be. And I do have an answer for you: X-Men: Dark Phoenix is better than X-Men 3: The Last Stand. By quite a bit.

However, it’s not all fun and games. In fact, it’s not fun and games at all. Dark Phoenix is an intense, moody drama that spares no time for the frivolous humor we enjoyed so much in Days of Future’s Past or even a little bit in Apocalypse. Dark Phoenix is serious business.

The movie starts not unlike Shazam! did, with a horrible car accident in the 1970s leading to childhood trauma for a main character. But yes unlike Shazam! this grim occurrence sets the tone for an entire movie.

So if you were hoping for another Quicksilver music video, I must tell you the movie’s intolerance for levity does not allow for such a thing. Logan had more laughs than this. X-Men doesn’t have to be funny to work, but the emotional pacing of Dark Phoenix is just relentless.

The movie jumps to the ‘90s to set up who our characters have become in the 10ish years since the last movie. The teens have become the X-Men and teachers at Xavier’s school despite only looking 2 years older. Xavier himself has managed to quiet down the prejudice mutants faced across the world by tapping into everyone’s hero fantasy and presenting them as a super-powered rescue force. Meanwhile, Mystique is questioning whether the increasingly outlandish stunts the team is being sent on, despite the help they provide, are amounting to making the X-Men little more than a circus act presented for the entertainment of the non-mutants at an ever-increasing risk to the team’s safety.

Just when you think things might become somewhat lighthearted, Dark Phoenix wastes no time pulling you back down to Earth. This is true despite the fact that the X-Men’s first outlandish (literally) rescue stunt of the movie is blasting into space to save a shuttle crew endangered by an apparent solar flare.

I will give props to the movie for making the Phoenix Force a thing without going down the rabbit hole of the Shi’Ar Empire, the M’Kraan Crystal and other far-out parts of that story. The movie is, at its core, just about a young woman who must confront a long-forgotten trauma. The twists, turns and pitfalls within being mirrored by her struggles with the Phoenix Force without. As such, one area in particular that Dark Phoenix does so much better than Last Stand is Jean herself. She actually does stuff, says things and pushes the plot forward. As opposed to putting on a red dress, standing around staring at things, saying nothing, and waiting for the end of the movie to arrive. This version of Jean has hopes, fears and experiences. She acts and reacts. She tries to solve her own mystery. I guess being Sansa Stark in a past life helps.

As for other parts of the movie, James McAvoy remains much more convincing as a fallible Xavier than Patrick Stewart ever did. We get a few more mutant cameos, including who I assume could only be Dazzler. We also see a brief appearance of Genosha, which is less Magneto’s Bioshock-like Utopia and more like a refugee camp on an island so small and close to the water it probably flooded permanently the very next year in-universe.

The action scenes continue to impress, using a wide variety of set pieces, locations and camerawork, and not being too numerous or overstaying their welcome. As should befit the newest movie, the CG work is the best yet.

Verdict: Rental (3/5). The movie does a capable job of telling a very dramatic and emotional story and adding superpowers around it, but it needlessly gives up some of the good parts of the series’ formula to do so.