(Editor’s Note: AP Marvel is trying a different review format! Enjoy the following from our co-editors Izzy Sio and Sabrina Clarke, alongside Chris Walker of Rising Young Minds!)
Character Development
Izzy Sio: Clearly, Dark Phoenix paid more attention to some characters than others. Charles is a good example: one of the biggest achievements of the First Class movies (alongside an assist from Logan) is that they’ve truly been able to unpack this esteemed, holier-than-thou image of Professor X. He’s not just this wise, nurturing, protector of mutants: he’s human, he has flaws, and he may not be as nurturing and as much of a protector as we think he is. He’s selfish, manipulative, and can be blinded by power and his good intentions too easily. But in this movie’s attempts to add more dimensions to Charles, it fails literally every other character in this movie.
What we get of Jean pre-Phoenix Force solely within Dark Phoenix (because let’s be honest, most people don’t remember what happened in Apocalypse including myself) wasn’t enough to establish a strong connection to her to sustain the rest of the movie. What kept this connection going was the emotion that Sophie Turner imbues throughout her gestures, body language, and the tensions she plays with in her performance. Some characters did have some surprising A to B significant development, such as Beast (Nicholas Hoult) once he steps out of the shadow of Jennifer Lawrence’s Mystique. Some characters were OK, like the by-the-book performance of Tye Sheridan’s Scott Summers. Most characters and their build up over their past franchise history were completely wasted, like Evan Peters’ Quicksilver being written off after the first act with a serious injury. And some characters were on the verge of destroying their own legacy such as Michael Fassbender’s Magneto, who overacted his way onto Genosha in a radicalized take, and Jennifer Lawrence’s Mystique, whose lack of care only made her fridging undermine everything her character stood for within the First Class period. I heavily blame the latter two more on the script than Fassbender’s and Lawrence’s performances, but this tragedy should still be addressed and would be best addressed in this category.
Sabrina Clarke: To be entirely transparent with everyone, I missed roughly the first 5 minutes of the film due to concessions taking longer than anticipated, so I jumped in right around the point that I believe mattered most: the rescue mission. But, truthfully, I’m not entirely convinced that the amount of time that I missed would’ve made much of a difference in understanding the ways the characters may or may not have grown and/or developed since the last film, much less in this one alone. Hank (Nicholas Hoult) lashing out at Professor Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) felt performative, especially since there was only one scene prior to give the audience context on how Hank and Raven’s (Jennifer Lawrence) relationship had developed, if at all, since the last film. Jean (Sophie Turner) seeking Erik’s (Michael Fassbender) help in controlling her power didn’t make sense, making me just as confused as the rest of the mutants up until she spoke about killing people and liking the feeling. Erik then wanting Jean dead didn’t feel as though it paid off either because it took so little time to change his mind from wanting to help Jean to wanting to hurt her. I liken this incongruity to those who believed that Daenerys Targaryen setting King’s Landing ablaze didn’t fit her character development at all in Game of Thrones’ final season. Much like my rationalization for Dany’s fiery ending, I believe that had Simon Kinberg written more scenes that gave the audience a chance to believe in Erik’s willingness to break all that he’d worked to rectify by being in seclusion, his turn would’ve been more justified. I didn’t believe that Charles was sorry for doing what he did to Jean as a child, especially because the apparent consequences weren’t dire enough to force him to feel bad. Jean is also not convincingly a woman of the people, so I didn’t believe that the school even cared enough to change its name considering she spent most of her time alone or with Scott (Tye Sheridan) and her other friends in previous films.
Chris Walker: There really isn’t any of it, which is kind of a constant of these movies. They work as standalone films on their own. The scene with Hank and Prof. X and then Hank joining up with Magneto because he’s that angry did not seem as warranted as they wanted you to. Prof. X is portrayed as having bigger ego and it needs deflating, but I had trouble believing in this because I could not understand how they went from enemy number one to having a phone especially for the president. The movie doesn’t give little hints to connect the dots, which leaves gaps to fill.
Jean has reasonable motivation but none of her moves after finding out her dad is alive, like joining Magneto or joining up with the Tilda Swindon wanna-be, made sense at all. Jessica Chastain had motivation but also made me laugh, because I could never take the character as seriously, since she was trying so hard to be like Swindon in any movie. All the other X-Men at times just felt like dead weight and like they were forced to be in this movie. Why was Quicksilver cut like 5 min in? Did they not have the budget for both Nightcrawler and Quicksilver? One slow-mo scene a movie? It was sloppy and built on the idea that there was enough from Apocalypse to build on when it was really the opposite: constantly shifting the main characters each movie doesn’t give enough of a base to build on so the character development across movies stalls out, over time. When you don’t take the time to build it within the movie itself, it makes the characters flat.
Visuals
IS: MY GOD. A lot of parts of this movie were incredibly inconsistent but you know what wasn’t? These EFFECTS. I knew from the minute I saw the poster that this movie would look good. The cracks of the Phoenix Force radiating through Jean Grey are great imagery, and towards the end it honestly looks better than most of Captain Marvel’s space powers. In fact, all the scenes in space looked pretty good. The big fight set-piece scenes of this movie were fairly VFX-heavy, and helped them to stand out amidst the mediocrity of the other components of the movie.
SC: This film is visually expensive and it shows. Despite my not knowing what good or bad CGI really looks like, I think I would say that the energy of the phoenix looked appealing and that the effects associated with that paid off in portraying an all-consuming force. The visuals that give me the most grief, however, were Jean’s floating hair which was especially unnecessary given her awful wig, and the lackluster camerawork. Considering the film itself was paced fine, the largest qualm came from the cutting back and forth before each character’s line which made Dark Phoenix feel ten times longer than it was. Kinberg didn’t really use the beautiful production design to his advantage at all, truly missing all opportunities for symmetry or foreshadowing through the actors’ blocking, things that could’ve possibly covered up the subpar dialogue. The action scenes were exciting and interesting, which is probably one of the film’s few redeeming qualities alongside the gorgeous color grading and selection.
CW: Very pleasing. Seriously, better than Fantastic Four (2015) and X-Men Apocalypse, which both had visual issues, amongst other things. The scenes with Jean as the Phoenix worked well but also the space stuff looked great. The locations looked well built up and not deeply green-screened at all. This was probably the strongest part of the movie. I liked the costumes and the make-up of the characters like Nightcrawler and Ariki. The Dazzler scene was awesome, literally such a good little nugget in there.
Social Issues/Commentary
IS: I texted Sabrina last week predicting that this movie wouldn’t highlight any social issues, and mentioning that this section would just be us saying “disappointed but not surprised.” What happened instead was more unsatisfying. The commercialization, fame, and success of the X-Men — or X-Women, I guess, according to Jennifer Lawrence — brought in a lot of opportunities for interesting discussions and threads on the X-Men’s representation and roles among the larger human society. Instead, the movie forgets all this development within the first act and picks it up halfway through the movie to taunt you. This commentary really only amounted to some heated, poorly acted discussions between Raven and Charles, one heated, better acted discussion between Beast and Charles, and some moments of crises and struggle for Charles when he loses his special phone to the President. In short, this commentary only served to further propel the White Man.
SC: Raven’s one line about the women doing more than the men was garbage. It felt unfounded and unnecessary given the context of the argument she was having with Charles. In addition to that, it was never ever revisited and ended up feeling like Kinberg solely wrote it to make sure that any feminists who watched the film would be satisfied (it would’ve been better if you’d taken it out, Simon). Raven’s argument itself, however, was pretty interesting in that it covered the issue of risking mutant lives to save human ones, a recurring problem in the comics that Charles very barely attempts to understand. This argument isn’t new to me because of how similar it sounds to those who agree that no marginalized people should die for a country that continuously refuses to acknowledge their right to be just as comfortable and free as their majority counterparts. The disappointing thing about this conversation is that this conflict doesn’t exceed that one scene and has virtually little, if any, solution. Changing the name of the school doesn’t do much for the way the public, non-mutant community perceives the students; in fact, it communicates that regardless of how humans see mutants (like the epic fear of Jean Grey in this film), the mutant community will do what it wills, completely erasing the peace that Charles sought all along. Maybe this is Kinberg’s point: that there will never be peace between the races so long as each party decides to look out for their own and refuses to engage in conversation to find apt solutions that can keep everyone happy. Whether or not this was his true point, however, he could’ve tried harder to make something stick.
CW: There really wasn’t any with substance. It was ham-fisted in there. If anything, manipulating people so they forget their past is a larger commentary on gaslighting that the movie kind of lets Xavier off of. The fact that he did it to help Jean move past it is bullshit. That’s also a consistent theme within the comics they haven’t dealt with either. Mystique’s X-Women comment is there. It exists. I don’t know whether this movie is supposed to be deeply feminist. It passes the Bechdel test though, which is great.
Plot
IS: I think your views on Dark Phoenix depend greatly on this component. In my opinion, this movie was as focused as it could be — or honestly, at least more than X-Men: The Last Stand. The key difference between the two is that they focused on different things; The Last Stand prioritized telling Joss Whedon’s “Gifted” comic book arc over Chris Claremont’s “The Dark Phoenix Saga”, while Dark Phoenix is purely a movie about “The Dark Phoenix Saga” integrated within the First Class universe in a way that’s almost organic. I also appreciated the interconnectivity of Dark Phoenix within the X-Men universe, such as the chess match and Raven and Beast’s conversation. This is a closing of Fox’s X-Men universe after all, and it added a sentimental touch that fans of the universe would appreciate. The movie stumbles a lot — especially at the end — with clichéd, cop-out storylines and conclusions but this is a movie in Fox’s X-Men universe, so what can you really expect.
SC: I can confidently say that this film happened by giving bullet points of events that needed to happen, writing those events out into scenes, and then stitching them together in a way that only made sense in terms of its chronology. What this plot lacked was common sense. If Raven is to die, what things do the audience need to see in order to believe her value to the X-Men, especially to Hank? If Jean is going to consider giving up the power of the phoenix, what multiple trials can she go through to make the audience believe that she is out of control and in need of help to let her true self out? In what ways can the audience see that she is trying to fight the power of the phoenix, thus making her more conflicted internally? All of these questions remained unanswered or answered partially in ways that felt more than lackluster. To its defense, Dark Phoenix paced all of the events well, meaning that the amount of time that passed between each major scene or fight or turning point felt natural despite a lack of changing clothes. The biggest issue was the timing of the dialogue to the point where it felt unnaturally slow, almost akin to watching paint dry.
CW: This was by the book and very predictable which may have been good, in the long run. The movie didn’t have any out there surprises, or outlandish drops. It made sense but it just kind of did nothing or went anywhere. There’s a point where by the book is boring and this movie is boring at times. It doesn’t do a good job of building up the tension between characters in different factions. There’s no real inside jokes. Lana Condor dodged a big ole bullet not being in this to do To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before because I bet money they would have had her only say two things but run her ass around the world again. The plot in the comics is award-worthy and cringe-worthy at times, because it’s a thriller of X-Men vs Hellfire Club vs Shi’ar. It’s wild. This movie is plain as white bread at times. Is Jean dead in the end? Or did she just dip off to destroy worlds? Do we need to care?
Tone
IS: This wasn’t an area to write home about; it was just okay. It wasn’t consistent, and the inconsistency of the performances — ranging from phoned-in Lawrence to over-the-top Fassbender — didn’t help make this memorable in any sort of way. Jessica Chastain’s alien race did not help this either, feeling as if the movie was going too off the tracks from its actual story. In coverage, Simon Kinberg has attempted to put forward that Dark Phoenix is meant to be a more quieter, somber movie that plays more like a character study than a summer blockbuster. While attempts at this are apparent, these qualities end up circling among themselves within the tone of this movie, amounting to a tone that you really can’t quite place but don’t care enough to try to decipher. You just roll with it.
SC: Dark Phoenix tried too hard to seem serious to the point where it got cringey. The dialogue itself was poorly done and written in a way that seemed so incredibly unnatural. But how natural can a movie about mutants really be?, one might ask, to which I would reply that all it takes to write natural dialogue for anyone is to A) pull directly from the source material, and/or B) sit in a public place and listen to how people of various age groups and backgrounds communicate with each other. Raven’s line about the women doing more completely undercut that tone because of how poorly timed it was. I’m not going to say any more than what has already been written and tweeted, but Storm’s (Alexandra Shipp) accent was inconsistent and the movie would’ve probably benefited from it magically disappearing much like Elizabeth Olsen’s accent over all of her appearances as Scarlet Witch. I believe that the film’s tone could’ve been rectified by better dialogue because this talented cast could only do so much with what they’d been given such that not even everyone’s favorite, James McAvoy, could save this trainwreck. But I’m thankful for Jessica Chastain.
CW: I laughed too much to take this movie as seriously as it wanted which was very serious. It’s kind of sad because they should have added more jokes. Seriously, someone should have call Tina Fey and had her punch it up. Alexandra Shipp’s Storm accent is trash and I’ve been against her casting for a while because of this but also wanting to see an African actress play the role. It would be cool to make someone’s career from this movie. Does anyone like each other in this movie? Is anyone friends in this movie? I believe that taking away Sophie Turner’s juul would make her sad enough to cry because nothing in this movie feels serious enough for me to cry about. I can’t tell if Jean and Cyclops are in love, or just together because they’ve been around each other long enough that they just got together.
Assignment Rubric
Chris Walker can be found on Twitter and Instagram @cwlkr20
