What he can’t do, at least consistently, is make this story pop, or prevent the inevitable showdown – with multiple parties engaged in a massive battle – fully engaging, as opposed to devolving into a sort-of chaotic mess.
Simon Kinberg has worked on scripts for three previous X-Men films, and with his promotion here to writer and director, approaches the material with considerable conviction, as well as plenty of callbacks to the earlier movies. But then there’s the little matter of the evil presence, embodied by an ethereal Jessica Chastain, which covets Jean’s power, setting up a dual threat: What Jean might do when the “dark” side of her is unleashed, and the plan that this shadowy force has for using her to achieve dominion over Earth. So far, so OK, including the early ’90s setting. Cyclops, that it’s like “everything is turned up.” Instead, she essentially becomes a super-charged battery, telling her boyfriend Scott (Tye Sheridan), a.k.a. Jean joins her X-Men team members on a rescue mission in space, during which she’s exposed to an energy that by all rights should be fatal. (The 1990s “X-Men” animated series, frankly, probably still has the best claim to having put the story on screen.) This underlying template also found its way into the sequels in the original trilogy – culminating in “X-Men: The Last Stand” – although again, in a manner that didn’t wholly translate the qualities that made the characterization of it as a “saga” more than mere hyperbole. Charles Xavier and Magneto has provided the backbone of these movies – but nor does it maximize that talented pairing or the broader material.įor those who didn’t spent the ’70s reading X-Men comics, the bones of the story hinge on Jean Grey (again well played by “Game of Thrones’” Sophie Turner), an enormously powerful mutant who has grown up under the tutelage – and indeed, control – of Xavier, who has sought to curb her potentially dangerous abilities. In the process, it doesn’t entirely squander the cast headed by James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender – whose screen chemistry as Prof. Notably, “Phoenix” shares a weakness with that most recent film – namely, an utterly mediocre villain. Grading on a curve of recent X-Men movies, place “Dark Phoenix” well behind the “X-Men” editions subtitled “First Class” and “Days of Future Past” but ahead of “Apocalypse,” the latter representing the nadir of the mutant heroes. Yet the hope for a truly definitive take on the story, “Dark Phoenix,” proves a tepid addition to the “X-Men” cinematic series, while possessing just enough merit to prevent entirely going down in flames. The Phoenix Saga in the X-Men comics of the 1970s is rightly considered a classic of the genre, which explains why filmmakers keep returning to it.
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