X-MEN: DARK PHOENIX

Relight My Firebird

Fox’s mutant saga reaches a fiery conclusion as the classic comic book tale is retold. Again.

RELEASED OUT NOW! 12a | 114 minutes Director simon Kinberg Cast sophie Turner, James Mcavoy, Michael Fassbender, Jessica Chastain, Jennifer lawrence, Nicholas Hoult

The curtain draws on Fox’s X-Men franchise with a film that’s had the marketing push and online buzz of a non-committal shrug. Which is a shame, because Dark Phoenix gamely tries to inject some new life into the Marvel movie mutants. For a good while it succeeds, until the final act when it comes across more like the cinematic embodiment of, “Oh, what’s the point?”

Let’s cut to the chase, though. What you really want to know is whether it’s better than its overblown, hollow predecessor X-Men: Apocalypse and the train wreck of a film whose multiple failings it’s trying to rectify, X-Men: The Last Stand. The answer is an emphatic yes in both cases. So that’s a relief. But it’s no X2 or First Class.

In case you’ve been out of the loop (and, as we said, the publicity has been suspiciously low-key, so it’s likely), Dark Phoenix is a second cinematic attempt at one of the X-Men comics’ most loved storylines, in which Jean Grey becomes host to an alien force that makes her cosmically powerful and eventually – since cosmic power corrupts cosmically – a destroyer of worlds. Last Stand stripped out all the cosmic stuff in an attempt to fit all this into one movie that had two other parallel plots jostling for attention. But thanks to the series’ timeline reboot at the end of Days Of Future Past, a new cast and creative team now gets a second chance to tell the story.

First-time director Simon Kinberg (though he’s been involved in the series as a writer and producer since The Last Stand) rather counterintuitively reinstates the cosmic while also striving to make Dark Phoenix feel like a more intimate and personal film. This dissonance, in the end, proves both the film’s main strength and its greatest weakness.

This time the plot is wholly concentrated on Jean, and the rise and fall of the Phoenix. Whereas Jean was a fairly vacuous character in Apocalypse, Sophie Turner, who plays her, is given something to get her teeth into here as we learn of Jean’s tragic past, and then have to relearn it (to say more would be spoilering).

James McAvoy also has the opportunity to explore new sides to Charles Xavier; at the start of the film his X-Men are bona fide superheroes, beloved by the public, but as Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) points out, this may have gone to the Professor’s head. Then, after Jean’s encounter with a cosmic force unleashes new powers and old memories, the X-Men learn something shocking about their leader…

These early, character-led moments are refreshingly effective, drawing you into the

There’s a lot to enjoy in Dark Phoenix, but it falls short

story. There’s also some acceptable fan-pleasing with a cameo from Dazzler (played by The Orville’s Halston Sage) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) having established an early version of Genosha, his island-based mutant colony. The action scenes also feel more rugged and visceral than usual for X-films, rather than mere spectacle. For the first hour or so it feels more like a Netflix pilot for the best Marvel TV series ever.

But there’s another hour to go, and the film unravels as the alien menace comes to the fore. Led by a bored-looking Jessica Chastain, these are the D’Bari, who in the comics saga were the race Phoenix destroyed when she blasted their planet. Here they’re rather bland shapeshifters with minimal motivation who clearly spend most of the film in human form for budgetary reasons. Much of the good character work is sidelined for a cosmic plot that ends up as a fight on a train. A decentlystaged fight on a train, but, still, not exactly mindblowing. There’s a lot to enjoy in Dark Phoenix, especially the performances and the down-anddirty action, but ultimately it falls short, ending up as a listless affair. There’s not enough “Wow!” to deliver on the cosmic, and not enough of an emotional punch for it to deliver as a pure characterbased drama.

But there is what we assume is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the future home of the X-Men. Keep your eye on the badges on the arms of the soldiers transporting the mutants in the train…

Bye bye X-Men. See you soon in a new universe. Dave Golder

Previously lined up to play Iron Man 3’s Maya Hansen, Chastain was also reportedly in the frame for Hope in Ant-Man.

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