“Dark Phoenix” Review | A Pile of Ashes
Spoilers beware.
It takes a special lack of preparedness, planning, and overall execution to completely fumble one of the greatest sagas in the history of comics not once, but twice. Dark Phoenix, released in 2019 right in the middle of Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox, is one of the worst films in the franchise. The epitome of “going out with a whimper,” the final main X-Men film stumbles and frustrates time and time again; with very little buildup provided in order to care about Jean’s decent into power and corruption by the Phoenix Force, Dark Phoenix buckles beneath its own weight, resulting in a clumsy, poorly-directed mess of ideas that feel so indescribably small despite the original story’s grandeur.
The X-Men are now heroes to the public. Humanity and mutantkind have, for the time being, settled their differences and garnered a kind of mutual understanding for one another, with Charles Xavier’s team acting as symbols for cooperation and heroism. A NASA mission goes haywire, and as the X-Men — lead by Mystique and including Cyclops, Jean Grey, Nightcrawler, Quicksilver, Storm, and Beast — are saving the astronauts, a mysterious cosmic force enters the body of Jean as she saves the others. This being — known as the Phoenix Force — corrupts Jean and forces her to lose control of her abilities more and more, turning her into a dangerous…
