By the time Dark Phoenix was in the cinema, I had drifted away from the X-Men films that weren't Deadpool or Logan, so I only heard about it second hand for years. When I finally got around to watching Dark Phoenix, I went in expecting a garbage fire along the lines of Apocalypse, but I ended up only finding a bland and boring film that failed to capitalise on anything good it had going. Bland is the order of the day for Dark Phoenix, it doesn't take risks anywhere, even down to the one, momentary, glimpse of the aliens after the Phoenix Force, which turns out to be something more like Signs than any X-Men comic. Even as only a casual reader of X-Men, I seem to remember the aliens most associated with the team to be the Shi'ar, the Brood and the Phalanx, all of whom have a pretty striking look, but clearly no one at the studio wanted to risk being interesting for thirty seconds. Another fun element, there are no new characters in Dark Phoenix that are adaptations from the comics, despite some disposable Magneto followers being perfect for that kind of thing.
As to the plot, well, it's another stripped-down version of The Dark Phoenix Saga, but at least it uses aliens, but no slow descent to decadence or madness, because I guess Jean Grey is still meant to be a teenager? What year is Dark Phoenix even set in? This timeline doesn't make any sense. If it's the 1990s, then Charles and Magneto should be pushing 70 and Jean should be well into her 20s, but the actors are only a few years older than they were in the last film, so none of it fits at all, no wonder Jennifer Lawrence has the good sense to get killed in the second act. Magneto turns out to be living in some kind of weird anarchist mutant reservation, which almost is a plot point for a hot second, with soldiers in anachronistic (I think? What year is it?) Bell Jet Ranger Hueys making a "we gave you this land" racist argument, but it doesn't go anywhere because we need to get to another CGI mutant fight. As most of the X-Men require some form of CGI to visualise their powers, I'm pretty used to seeing talented actors have to wave their hands around in the air like stoned performing arts students by now.
The X-Men film series is really not great, all things considered, with perhaps 6 "good" films in more than twenty total (X-Men 2, Days of Future Past, The Wolverine, Deadpool, Deadpool 2 and Logan for those keeping score at home), however it remains pretty important in terms of the history of superhero cinema. The first X-Men was part of the late 1990s "rebirth" of superhero cinema, alongside Spider-Man and Blade, and The New Mutants ended the run well after Avengers Endgame redefined the genre as a global phenomenon. X-Men is the "also ran" of the genre, whilst being a star-launching vehicle for several a-list actors over the years and pushing the genre out further where it could. As of the time of writing, The New Mutants isn't out in my country yet, because cinemas are closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but I will be getting onto it as soon as it drops on Disney+, because I'm not sure I want to pay actual money for it given the reviews as they stand. This has been a long journey going back over every film, but now I can hopefully branch out into some different stuff. Lots of things popping up on Netflix now.
No comments:
Post a Comment