X-Men: Dark Phoenix
Jean Meanie
released OUT NOW! 2019 | 12 | Blu-ray (4K/standard)/dVd/ download Director simon Kinberg Cast James Mcavoy, sophie Turner, Michael Fassbender, Jessica Chastain
Even as Dark Phoenix begins the familiar, searchlight-swept 20th Century Fox logo feels like a tombstone. In the past year, the studio has been swallowed whole by Disney, terminating this run of movies as the characters prepare to be absorbed into the MCU. In truth, X-Men already felt like a wounded franchise, crippled by muddled continuity, the loss of its star player in Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine and the sense that Marvel’s own output had long since kicked it into irrelevance.
This final entry in Fox’s X-Men run is nothing if not self-aware. “Who are we?” asks the first voice we hear, over total blackness, a dead screen. “Are we destined to a fate beyond our control? Or can we evolve? Become something more?” Later on, Magneto tells Professor X, “You’re always sorry, Charles. And there’s always a speech. But nobody cares anymore.” Whether intentional or simply ironic, these lines feel like commentary on the malaise that made this entry in the mutant saga the lowest-grossing of all when it hit the cinemas.
Nominally set in the ’90s – though there’s no real attempt at period detail or flavour – it finds the franchise taking another stab at the classic Dark Phoenix storyline from the comics, previously blown by 2006’s
X-Men: The Last Stand. While it preserves the essential premise of Jean Grey being corrupted by a cosmic force after an orbital mission, it ejects all the good stuff: the kinky machinations of the Hellfire Club, the epic interplanetary stakes, the climactic, heart-wrenching battle on the Moon. Everything that made the comic book telling so memorable, so gripping.
Sure, there’s a nod to the SF trappings of the source material – a chilly Jessica Chastain leads a bland alien faction called the D’Bari – but this is very much a grounded, stripped-down, boots-and-concrete take on the Phoenix saga. And to its credit the movie wants to explore the internal truth of its characters, taking time to focus on the mental unravelling of Jean and tease out the darker, more manipulative side of Charles Xavier. Allies and enemies are shuffled and there’s a crackle of 21st century topicality as the government declares plans for mutant internment camps.
But for all that it takes a decent shot at psychological complexity, the film as a whole is underwhelming. It’s a first-time director’s credit for writer and producer Simon Kinberg and while he gets great, empathic performances from McAvoy, Turner and Fassbender, the rest of the X-Men are reduced to ciphers. Nightcrawler’s simply a transportation device, Storm’s a
Maybe that mutant gene stopped evolving
haircut and even Quicksilver’s crowd-pleasing schtick feels rote this time around. There are single comic book frames where these characters have more charm and colour. The action, climaxing with a superpowered battle on a maximum security train, is competently staged but lacks true thrills, giving the film the look of an ambitious Netflix episode – or, indeed, that original X-Men movie.
By the time the Mutant Control Unit arrive – and yes, the initials on the uniforms are far from coincidental – you do wonder if the death of this long-lived franchise is actually a mercy killing. Maybe we just stopped caring, or maybe that mutant gene simply stopped evolving.
Can it become something more? Only Kevin Feige truly knows the answer to that one.
Extras Five deleted scenes offer mostly inconsequential material, but the original ending showcases a moving turn by James McAvoy as Charles delivers a private farewell to [REDACTED]. “Rise Of The Phoenix” (80 minutes) is an exhaustive five-part Making Of, which drills down into everything from choices of camera angles to the creation of a convincing alien language. It’s refreshing to see such an old-school documentary now that most behind-the-scenes features are reduced to hyperactive blipverts. There’s also an audio commentary by Kinberg and Parker, trailers and “How To Fly Your Jet To Space With Beast” (two minutes), a starkly pointless piece of what feels like on-set improv by Nicholas Hoult. All of the above are exclusive to the Blu-ray formats. Nick Setchfield