Dark Phoenix was directed by Simon Kinberg longtime writer-producer of many x-men films first-time director
and this film is about Jean Grey and it explores the devastating power within
her and her difficulties in harnessing it all of the people in her life like
her parents Charles Xavier and her friends in the x-men who are trying to save
her from that power as well as some dangerous new people who would like to
harness that power for themselves it's not the first time we've explored this the aspect of JeanGrey in a movie x-men The Last Stand did as well and it was
definitely one of the lesser x-men films well not quite as terrible as some
people say I mean I much prefer x-men 3 over something like origins but in the
case of Dark Phoenix I was really looking forward to seeing these characters
with these actors get involved with this storyline and I really wanted to see
what Sophie Turner was going to do with it and a major plus of the movie is
Sophie Turner as this character she's great she goes through a lot of changes
emotions very quickly and it never seems messy because of her delivery she's
able to ride the wave that is this character it's also kind of impossible for James McAvoy to be bad in a movie he's just amazing and everything and once
again he's terrific as Charles Xavier so is Michael Fassbender as Magneto
there's a lot of great talent in this movie and it's rarely wasted unfortunately
I would say the acting is my favorite aspect of this movie beyond that this was
a messy and dull film that didn't really do much for me and this is coming from
someone who has heavily defended Fox's x-men films I really love this franchise
and I have for nearly 20 years I like almost all of them but in the case of
Dark Phoenix I wouldn't say the film made me angry or anything I didn't leave
the theater upset it was just very bland and it feels like we built to this and
nothing really happens of interest because they approach this character as this a new threat that could completely dismantle the world that Charles Xavier has
tried to build and it's
this major threat that Jean Grey has these abilities
that she could dish trio all of that and yes she does do some bad things and yes
she does anger some characters because of choices that she makes but it's never
like the kind of thing you would expect to completely dismantle the
government's view of mutants but with previous x-men movie seven the ones that
are still within the timeline that hasn't been erased which we'll talk about in
a second those films featured mutants doing things that were far worse than
anything Jean Grey does in this movie that apparently threatens to dismantle
everything Xavier has built I was expecting it to be a lot darker especially
for the title I honestly I knew it wasn't gonna happen but I wish this movie
was rated R I think it really could have benefited from that and I don't think
it would have lost an audience at all after films like Logan and Deadpool one
and two within this franchise were so successful I think this movie really
could have benefited from some more intensity but let's talk about that
timeline for a second because it is actually really confusing now and it's
starting to bother me I've begun to pay attention to it a lot more in the past
with the x-men movies, I just tried to watch each one and see like what that film
did for me and its contained story but when Days of Future past came out it was
a great movie but it kind of screwed things up now the universe is all over the
place things that maybe happened or that we thought happened haven't happened
quite in that way entire film shave been erased and we're not supposed to take
the events of those films seriously anymore because in Dark Phoenix things
happen that just don't relate to the pre-existing films we've seen x-men 1 and
2 and so obviously things have now been scattered something alternate is
happening something has been changed by whatever Logan did in Days of Future
past because if you go into this film expecting some sort of connective tissue
from 1992 when this film takes place to the year 2000 when x-men happened
you're not gonna get that for one apparently in eight years James McAvoy goes
from looking like
James McAvoy to looking like Patrick Stewart and if you really
want to examine the narrative of the x-men franchise especially with Dark
Phoenix starts to get really annoying and it threatens to ruin the entire
film and so I tried not to think about it while I was watching the and just
roll with the punches but if you care that's really gonna bother you I think
you can tell there was an effort to back off from the more stylized approach of
previous x-men films because the way Kinberg directs which by the way this is
his feature directorial debut his only other credit was the most recent season the finale of The Twilight Zone Jordan peels reboot so this is a huge thing to just
suddenly direct and you can tell that he has not handled action
set-pieces you can tell that he doesn't always know how to make a conversation
feel like something other than shot-reverse-shot over and over again because
sometimes the scenes in which characters are just sitting down talking can be
kind of boring and since this is written and directed by Ken Berg this is
absolutely his vision on the screen that being said the film underwent extreme
reshoots from what I understand to add a third act sequence involving a train
now I didn't actually know that until after the movie I did some research about
it and so watching the movie I was just like okay this must be what he wants to
do and I remember when it got to that train sequence I was like wow this is
like way more exciting than the rest of the movie why is this like suddenly a different movie I even said in my head while watching it, this seems like a
different movie and then I went home and found out it was a reshoot and this is
disappointing for a lot of reasons people love the Jean Grey Phoenix stuff I do
and this is the second time where they've tried to do it in a film and it just
didn't really work and it has very little to do with the themes of that story
the idea of JeanGrey struggling with this power within her whether or not she
can embrace It can she still keep her friends if she embraces this power or if
she does is she just gonna go full-blown evil and murder the entire universe
I
love the idea of exploring that but both of these films have done the exact
same thing with this character when she is in that state they just make her
like a ticking time bomb which is boring that works in a few scenes but then
after that, you have to explore the complexities of this a little more and just
having her be a ticking time bomb it just reduces it makes it less than what
it could be Jessica Chastain has a major contribution to this film that I did
not know about and I don't know if other people know about it so I'm not going
to get into it because I didn't watch too many of the trailers I saw like one
and I didn't read any of the articles or interviews that always come out about
these characters and what they're doing but her character has a lot of screens
time and her goals are a major part of this story and you can tell it's trying
to be something that is like an influence on Jeanne but nothing is really
coming off it was horribly handled and really throwaway almost disposable and
yet it's so important to the narrative but it doesn't feel like it is you can
just tell that the writing really needs it to be important but you just don't
care about her entire story in how she relates to Jean Grae also side point
Cyclops has a line in this movie that I will never forget because my friend and
I laughed about it on the way home for probably five straight minutes it's him
trying to be super hard and it just didn't work so, in the end, the best parts of
Dark Phoenix for me was the actor's everyone's great in the movie but it just
didn't feel like it had the intensity this story needed and it's messages well
very important felt forced and not earned character actions are very important
but instead, they just sort of speak what the writer is hoping the themes are
instead of actually doing and showing these things and while that train
sequence added a lot of action to the film and made the finale more exciting
then it had been it was, unfortunately, a case of too little too late the rest of
the movie before that wasn't remotely as entertaining and the characters say
and do things that just don't lead to anything this should have been so much
better than it was and it could have been if they just went for that are and
really let Jean Grae loose but they don't it's almost like they played it safe
with her, I'm gonna give Dark Phoenix a C so guys if you do see Dark Phoenix I'd
like to know what you think because this is sort of an end of an era now that
Marvel has Fox 19 years and I mean the New Mutants is still coming out apparently
even though it's been like in post forever and changes in another x-men movie
with reshoots, I am excited to see that though I want to see what they do with
that film but nevertheless if you guys do see Dark Phoenix let me know what you
think II want to give a big thank you guys for as always if you like this you
can comment write here and get stuck mine eyes
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