X-men Dark Phoenix (SPOILERS)

[FaxModem1]

Saw it. Was underwhelmed. Jennifer Lawrence is underused, and Mystique is pretty much a classical case of fridging.

The big issue is that they lost what made the reboot series in the past work.

See, what made the First Class series work(even though nobody was aging over the span of decades, almost like they really were in Comic Book Time), is seeing how history is changed and affected by mutants, and the rights of mutants as a minority.

First Class has mutants become exposed to the governments via the Cuban Missile Crisis, and we see that mutants are a dirty little secret by a lot of people, akin to LGBT.

Days of Future Past worked because it was fixing both X3 and the awful Wolverine movies, and saying goodbye and giving a happy ending to the original cast. As well as seeing how mutants were viewed as a minority, with extermination being on the table because of hatred, and how that can lead to utter devastation due to the ignorance of the common man. Building hope and all that.

Apocalypse, though a flawed film, kept these going. We're seeing mutant rights getting better in some parts of the world, the next generation is even tolerated in shopping malls, with the worst thing happening is Kurt getting brain freeze from a smoothie. At the same time, the mutant minority in countries like East Germany are the targets of human trafficking and forced to fight each other. This all helps the film, as it shows that Xavier's efforts are paying off, with Mystique viewed as a folk hero for what's she done to save Nixon.

Now, let's look at Dark Phoenix. The X-men are celebrities, beloved by the common man, and Magneto is even head of Genosha, gifted land by the US government for mutants. Jean Grey kills a couple people by accident, and all of a sudden the US government revokes all mutant rights. This plotline is such a minor thing that it doesn't matter. Where are all those huge fans that we saw at beginning of the film? Why aren't we see protests, riots, etc.? Even X3 showed us that some humans would be on the mutant side there.

What they instead want to focus on is how Xavier's campaigning for mutant rights is turning him into an egotist, and how all his efforts puff into smoke the first time they run into a problem. I guess Magneto was right, and trying to coexist is pointless? How's that for undermining the message of 'We Can coexist'?

We're dealing with aliens as the bad guys, and how the mutants and humans working together to fight them in the climax, but we don't get enough of that for the payoff. It's not good, and it's just kind of a whimper for the end of the franchise. It's also sad that a lot of the fight scenes feel like they could be ripped from an episode of Shadowhunters, and seem to have the same amount of weight attached to it. Hell, bringing back Stryker from the previous films as a member of Mutant Containment Unit would have showed us that the X-men were accomplishing things if he was the one bringing them in, as a relationship had been established, and we could see how a couple decades of X-men saving the day may have changed his mind about them.

The big problem with this film, is that Jean Grey is really a total unknown to us in this film series, and it's a little hard to care about her right off the bat. Sophie Turner is doing her best, but I just wasn't connecting with Jean's problems growing up as a psychic.

On the plus side, we at least got a Cyclops who wasn't a douche, but felt like an actual compassionate, caring human being. Also, Nightcrawler is still an adorable sexy little elf, and Quicksilver gets a couple moments to show why he's awesome. The rest of the cast feel like they are either barely there, or have outlived their welcome.

[Solauren]

Apparently, (I have no source, as my wife read it to me from someplace she was looking online) a large portion of the movie was reshoot due to Captain Marvel/Avengers: Endgame, as it looked to 'similar' in terms of story, and wanting to be 'different'.

[FaxModem1]

Apparently, (I have no source, as my wife read it to me from someplace she was looking online) a large portion of the movie was reshoot due to Captain Marvel/Avengers: Endgame, as it looked to 'similar' in terms of story, and wanting to be 'different'.

If true, that would explain some things. For one thing, this film is the first in the reboot series to not be as colorful and vibrant, almost seeming to shy away from the almost gaudy costumes and sets from First Class, Days of Future Past, and Apocalypse.

[Mlenk]

Truly underwhelming and i was saddened to see that this mediocre movie is how they were gonna be ending this incarnation of Xmen movies. Pretty much the only thing i could think was while watching this was how Disney was gonna reboot and incorporate the Xmen and mutants in general into the MCU.

[Steve]

The reshoots may have also been from the growing certainty that the Mouse was acquiring Fox Studios and would almost certainly annex the entire setting into the MCU, so their plans were never going to get to be finished (supposedly they had plans to make this the first part of a trilogy).

[amigocabal]

I also noted that there were so few early 1990's pop culture references.

Where was Nirvana or Dr. Dre?

[SpottedKitty]

Haven't seen it yet, and given the reviews, I might not even get the DVD. Did they leave anything in the script from the original comic story?

[amigocabal]

I also noticed that the guy who played President Bush looks more like Jeb than George H.W.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

I just saw this last night, having bought the Blu-Ray and I'm glad I did. There were plenty of missed opportunities, such as Quicksilver didn't get a slo-mo scene set to contemporary music like his last two appearances, and for the first time in the entire series there was no Wolverine. What was missing was more detail on the D'Bari, and how their powers make them basically an Expy of the Skrulls.

What made absolutely no sense was those soldiers piling into the second chopper when Magneto and Phoenix were fighting one another for control when in fact what they should have done was run, given that helicopter was more than likely going to crash and kill everyone on board.

Yet for all of its failings I still kinda liked it, much like last year's Venom it did have some memorable scenes. In the finale the military were at least sporting weapons beefier than M16s (which didn't do shit), using mounted .50 cal machine guns (which did).