X-MEN: DARK PHOENIX (2019) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

X-men: dark phoenix (2019) movie

Genre              |   Science Fiction

Classification   |   M

Running time   |   114 minutes

Released         |   6 June 2019

cast

Jennifer Lawrence ... Raven
Tye Sheridan ... Scott Summers
Jessica Chastain ... Smith
James McAvoy ... Charles
Michael Fassbender ... Erik
Sophie Turner ... Jean Grey
Evan Peters ... Peter
Nicholas Hoult ... Hank

director

Simon Kinberg

writer

​John Byrne ... (story "The Dark Phoenix Saga")
Chris Claremont ... (story "The Dark Phoenix Saga")
Dave Cockrum ... (story "The Dark Phoenix Saga")
Simon Kinberg ... (written by)
Jack Kirby ... (comic book created by)
Stan Lee ... (comic book created by)

cinematographer

​Mauro Fiore

music

Hans Zimmer​

film editor

​Lee Smith

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box office result

Worldwide               $? million

Australia                 $? million

North America        $? million

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the best dialogue

Young Jean Grey: They say you can fix me?
Professor Charles Xavier: Jean, you are not broken.

Jean Grey: I came here looking for answers.
Erik Lehnsherr: You didn't come here looking for answers. You came here looking for permission.

Professor Charles Xavier: The mind is a fragile thing. Takes only the slightest tap to tip it in the wrong direction.

X-MEN: DARK PHOENIX (2019) MOVIE IMAGES

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X-MEN: DARK PHOENIX (2019) STORY SYNOPSIS

​In DARK PHOENIX, the X-MEN face their most formidable and powerful foe: one of their own, Jean Grey. During a rescue mission in space, Jean is nearly killed when she is hit by a mysterious cosmic force. Once she returns home, this force not only makes her infinitely more powerful, but far more unstable. Wrestling with this entity inside her, Jean unleashes her powers in ways she can neither comprehend nor contain. With Jean spiralling out of control, and hurting the ones she loves most, she begins to unravel the very fabric that holds the X-Men together. Now, with this family falling apart, they must find a way to unite -- not only to save Jean's soul, but to save our very planet from aliens who wish to weaponize this force and rule the galaxy.

X-MEN: DARK PHOENIX (2019) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date  6 June 2019

Pop ​Movee Rating

X-MEN: DARK PHOENIX brings down the curtain on nearly two decades of Marvel comic book movies produced by 20th Century Fox. The once great Studio has, in recent months, become a shadow of its former self; the commercial reality of its acquisition by The Walt Disney Company coming to the fore with many unreleased projects either being pushed back or shelved entirely…

Amongst the backdrop of the corporate changes, DARK PHOENIX has also endured something of a tortured path to release…

Principal photography took place back in the middle of 2017 and it was expected the film would debut late in the 2018 North American Summer or hold off until Christmas 2018. With no STAR WARS feature scheduled in the Christmas window and the only other tentpole being Warner Bros untested AQUAMAN, many observers were left scratching their heads when it was announced DARK PHOENIX wouldn’t make it until February 2019.

In tandem, it was also announced Josh Boone’s NEW MUTANTS, a Mutant story that taps into the Horror genre, would also be pushed back to the second half of 2019…

Initially, Director Simon Kinberg, who has been associated with the Fox X-MEN movies since the very beginning, stated that he wanted to spend time on post-production, crafting a more fitting version of the Jean Grey “Dark Phoenix” story that, to an extent, was an apology to X-MEN fans for the much-reviled 2006 X-MEN: THE LAST STAND, whom many felt butchered the opportunity to explore the character’s best story in a meaningful way.

Something didn’t seem quite right…

Confirmation that the film was to undertake extensive reshoots added to the speculation that the production was in serious trouble. (It’s not unusual for additional shooting to occur on major feature films, but rumours of disastrous early test screenings fuelled an online conspiracy that the film was going to be junked completely.)

Then the pieces fell into place…

Bob Iger and Rupert Murdoch announced that the latter had reached a deal to sell the 20th Century Fox to the The Walt Disney Company.

The online film and comic book community went into meltdown…

Disney was going to get rights back for a huge chunk of Marvel characters, including THE X-MEN, FANTASTIC FOUR, DEADPOOL and DOCTOR DOOM.

Perhaps, Kinberg’s claims about wanting to do justice to the “Dark Phoenix” story were an elaborate smoke screen… Maybe they were designed to buy time for Disney’s Marvel Studios to intercede on a film that could be adapted to fit into the Marvel Cinematic Universe structure just in time to take advantage of AVENGERS: ENDGAME incorporating the close-out of the current line-up of Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Natasha Romanoff, Clint Barton, Bruce Banner and Thor and making way for the X-Men to enter!

It’s not as if Kinberg didn’t have connections with Disney…

Kinberg was a Producer on STAR WARS: REBELS, produced by Lucasfilm; a part of, yes, you guessed it, The Walt Disney Company!

So, given corporate machinations and rumours of a production that had run off the rails, how does X-MEN: DARK PHOENIX rate?

Of the seven X-MEN films (not including the three Hugh Jackman Wolverine entries), DARK PHOENIX is the third shortest. Bryan Singer’s 2000 X-MEN film and Brett Ratner’s X-MEN: THE LAST STAND (2006) both clock in at 104 minutes, where Kinberg’s is a little longer at 114 minutes!

X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST (2014) and X-MEN: APOCALYPSE (2016) were both well over two hours. APOCALYPSE was especially guilty of overstaying its welcome and the drawn-out finale, with a myriad of redundant visual effects, could have been easily trimmed to a running time closer to 120 minutes (as opposed to the 144 minutes it dragged on for…)

DARK PHOENIX feels like a tired amalgam of all the things from the franchise that have been done better in previous outings. The series reached a high with DAYS OF FUTURE PAST, as Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen and Halle Berry came back to help James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Jennifer Lawrence pull together all the previous film’s storylines into one neat bow.

The introduction of new, younger characters in APOCALYPSE, such as Sophie Turner as jean Grey, Tye Sheridan as Cyclops and Alexandra Shipp as Storm, couldn’t compensate for the absence of series stalwarts such as Stewart and McKellen.

DARK PHOENIX suffers from a similar problem.

In addition to the absence of the aforementioned stalwarts, DARK PHOENIX attempts to get through with supporting turns by the likes of Jennifer Lawrence and Michael Fassbender. Both Raven and Magneto are absent for large parts of the film and its left to McAvoy, Sophie Turner, Tye Sheridan and Jessica Chastain, as a mysterious newcomer to the Mutant Universe, to propel DARK PHOENIX along.

As it turns out, Sophie Turner is the best thing about the film. Famke Janssen never inhabited Jean Grey in the same way Patrick Stewart did with Charles or Hugh Jackman did with Wolverine. It always felt like Jean could have been more in the hands of a better actress.

Turner manages to deliver some real emotion as Jean and the film comes alive whenever she’s on the screen. It doesn’t hurt that her character is a ticking time bomb of rage and sadness as the tragic circumstances of her childhood become the catalyst for her metamorphosis into one of the most powerful characters unleashed in the Marvel Universe.

Fassbender and McAvoy are workmanlike, but neither manage to recapture the chemistry they’ve shared in their earlier outings together such as X-MEN: FIRST CLASS (2011) or DAYS OF FUTURE PAST. The narrative decision to make Charles less noble in his intentions is confusing and McAvoy appears at a loss to properly convey the character’s hurt when both colleagues and students shun him at various points throughout the film.

Kinberg’s direction is not too bad, but, as sole screenwriter, he relies too much upon action set pieces that feel recycled from earlier X-MEN movies…

Yep, audiences have already seen Jean Grey (the Famke Janssen version) face-off against the rest of the X-Men at her childhood home…

Yep, audiences have already seen Michael Fassbender’s Magento do some funky stuff with metal on board a moving train…

Yep, audiences have already seen Nightcrawler have to avoid being shot by faceless, government soldiers as he tries to accomplish his mission…

If the AVENGERS returning to confront Thanos is “inevitable”, as the Mad Titan suggested in ENDGAME, then what the audience has to confront in DARK PHOENIX is “predictable”.

The film feels reductive.

It’s been pared down to minimise any future narrative impact on the Marvel Cinematic Universe but has enough “X-MEN” tropes included to try and satisfy those who handover their hard-earned cash at their local cinema to spend a couple of hours to find out where the current film version of the X-Men finish up…

Fans hoping for a triumphant send-off will be disappointed…

Elements of the film’s finale are fitting and Kinberg makes an effort to bring the series full circle, including a coda that echoes the relationship established between Charles and Erik back in Bryan Singer’s original X-MEN film all the way back in 2000.

However, fan service moments are one thing, an original, entertaining movie is another thing entirely…

X-MEN: DARK PHOENIX is not that…

Given the acquisition of Fox by Disney, judging DARK PHOENIX fairly will be a discussion among fans for the ages.

On the strength of what’s being released, there will be many who hope that the slate is wiped clean and a fresh approach to this much-loved Marvel property is applied under the watchful gaze of Kevin Feige, Alan Horn and Bob Iger!

X-MEN: DARK PHOENIX (2019) USEFUL LINKS

​X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2018) - IMDb
​X-Men: Dark Phoenix - Wikipedia
​X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2018) - Rotten Tomatoes

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