A super disappointment

when nothing actually does.

There are some good performances here, though. McAvoy is wonderful as Xavier, and Michael Fassbender once again gives much humanity to Magneto.

Even Turner manages to make you feel some kind of connection with Jean Grey, despite a total lack of anything in the script to make you care.

Naturally, we have the predictable bog-standard Magneto and Professor X storyline, in which Magneto starts out peaceful, gets righteously angry about something, turns evil as a result, and then has a change of heart in the final act — exactly like every other movie.

Considering the pantheon of characters available to play with in the X-Men storyline, how do they manage to do so little with the characters and the story?

Then there’s the plain lazy writing, such as in the opening scenes where a strange object appears on a NASA radar during a space shuttle launch.

Xavier asks Hank/Beast (Nicholas Hoult) if it could be the X-Jet and Hank says “No, it’s not designed to fly that high.” Then in the next scene they’re sending the X-Jet into space to rescue the shuttle crew, after one hasty scene of Hank saying “Oh yeah, it can fly that high now.”

You modified it in the last few minutes?

I felt like I was engaged with X-Men: Dark Phoenix, I wanted to watch it through. I don’t think I found it boring so much as I just found it to be inconsequential. It is a disappointing end to an era.

(M) is now showing at Village Cinemas and Reading Cinemas. Rating: