Finally got the chance to swipe away $2.17 on a Redbox rental, which is about what this flick deserves. I thought it was... fine. Some decent performances, some decent action, and a fairly brisk pace. Compared to the bloated Apocalypse, I appreciated its brevity, though its story obviously demanded a longer runtime. Overall, my reaction was "meh." Of all the
X-films, I only outright dislike
The Last Stand; this,
The Wolverine,
Logan,
Deadpool and
Apocalypse I find varying shades of dull, and
Origins: Wolverine is at least entertaining in its incompetence. And while there were lots of pretty swirly light effects, I found the most impressive visual to be Ms. Grey's tight shirt:
bionicbob said:
--there is an event that occurs that suddenly turns America against mutants again, except it is so poorly staged/edited/directed that the US gov't reaction seems like overkill....
Agreed. Someone says Jean "destroyed two communities," which apparently references her busting up a few cop cars and helicopter, with no fatalities that I can recall. Certainly doesn't seem especially heinous for the crew that just rescued a shuttle full of astronauts.
bionicbob said:
--wow, Nightcrawler really went to the dark side... not sure how I feel about that scene? [...] I mean what the hell happened to Nightcrawler? Where did that come from????
I couldn't figure out what you meant by this, until I realized surely you must be talking about
Beast's determination to kill Jean? Yeah, even counting Raven's hint that they should run off together, that seemed extreme. In any case, I agree with whoever on TV Tropes wrote
this:
TV Tropes said:
Informed Wrongness: Charles Xavier is portrayed as being in the wrong for hiding an
Awful Truth from Jean Grey, yet it's clearly shown that her father didn't want anything to do with her after she accidentally got her mother killed, and he just wanted to protect her from being hurt even more. The movie also calls him out for trying to use the X-Men as a means to generate good PR for the entire Mutant species, but considering that
they were being vivisected by the government merely 19 years prior, trying to make heroes out of his students is a logical course of action in a world where many of them are still hated and feared. Hank and Raven also quite bizarrely act like this is the
only reason for Jean going bad, somehow forgetting about the evil alien force intensifying her emotions.
Yes, when she reached an appropriate age, Charles should have told Jean her father was still alive. But, given that he wanted nothing to do with her, telling her both her parents had died as a child was probably the more merciful course of action, and under his watch, she became a heroic, happy young woman, so all the talk about how disgracefully he'd acted was weird.
Also weird: pretty much everything Jennifer Lawrence. But that's neither here nor there...
bionicbob said:
So what is better, DARK PHOENIX or LAST STAND? Dark Phoenix is Jean-centric as it should be, and attempts to be more character oriented, but it fails to fully engage. While Last Stand is a slick, more polished and exciting movie. Tough call but I would probably go with Last Stand.
Oh, hell no,
The Last Stand is an
eternal crime against geekdom. In its comparatively small scale, and scene of Magneto busting up a train at night,
Dark Phoenix gave me moments of nostalgia for the original
X-Men film. (The last scene with the chess pieces, OTOH, fell utterly flat.) Given that they went into the reshoots knowing this would almost certainly be the end, it's kind of a shame they didn't burn the series to the ground by killing off just about everyone!
Welp,
New Mutants notwithstanding, guess that's a wrap on
X-Men for a few years, particularly given the lack of announcements for the MCU's Phase Four, even for Deadpool (whose sequel, remember, is the highest-grossing
X-film to date). I'm still a bit sad to see the 19-year franchise end, but,
c'est la vie, I guess.
Dark Phoenix:
B-