Score: B-
Directed by Simon Kinberg
Starring Sophie Turner, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jessica Chastain, et. al.
Running time: 114 minutes
Rated PG-13
Long Story Short: Dark Phoenix brings the longest (semi-)continuously running superhero franchise, the X-Men, to a close. While the same characters and actors are here, Sophie Turner's Jean Grey gets a promotion to lead, resulting in some interesting psychological drama that nonetheless struggles to connect to the others. Despite some bland characters (esp. Chastain's villain) and some awkward writing, stalwarts McAvoy and Fassbender keep it interesting, with some fun action to boot.
In 1992, a space shuttle launch goes awry, and the world looks to the X-Men for help. After a long, difficult struggle, Professor Xavier, or "X" (McAvoy) has turned public opinion of his fellow mutants to the positive, and so he sends out his team to make good on this perception. The team finds a strange cosmic "cloud" near the shuttle; while they manage to save the crew, Jean Grey (Turner) ends up absorbing this cloud and somehow survives. Returning to their home, Grey finds that the force inside her has heightened her psychic powers - but also overwhelms her at random moments, at the same time resurfacing dark, dormant memories. Fearful of her own new strength and unpredictability, Grey flees the mutant school. With her mutant peers unable to help her and regular humans hunting her, hidden visitors from another world seek the force that haunts Grey - to use for their own nefarious ends.
Dark Phoenix returns the main cast of X-Men heroes from the most recent films - though it juggles their roles a bit - and adds a few well-known faces to the mix. Sophie Turner, just introduced as a young Jean Grey in the previous film, Apocalypse, is the lead. Although relatively new to this franchise, Turner has plenty of blockbuster experience through her role as Sansa in Game of Thrones. With little to work with in established character, the film focuses on her distress at the emergence of long-suppressed, tragic memories. Turner communicates this pain effectively, but unfortunately isn't able to make up for lost time in developing chemistry with her cast mates. This works in her favor ultimately, though, as she is truly an outlier, and thus a stranger, even among her fellow mutants. McAvoy and Fassbender continue to be great in their roles as Professor X and Magneto, respectively. Fortunately, we get little of their traditional conflict. Instead, McAvoy is adept in showing first defiance, then growing acceptance of a grave past mistake; Fassbender's role is much more restrained this time, and more interesting for it. The other mutants are less impressive. Jennifer Lawrence's Mystique has a brief part (you can almost feel her back pedaling out of the franchise), and Nicholaus Holt's Beast is still pretty generic. Jessica Chastain, similar to Apocalypse's Oscar Isaac, is an astounding waste of tremendous talent on an incredibly flat villain role.
Dark Phoenix is indeed one of the more somber blockbusters in recent memory, one that falls short of the franchise's standards yet still has a variety of strengths to boast. Taking place a decade after Apocalypse (there's little effort to age the characters, including actors who've played them now for 30 "movie" years, but it didn't bother me), there is a feeling of foreboding from the very start. Partly this is from an intro of a car crash involving a little girl (who survives); partly this is from the soundtrack (by the famed Hans Zimmer), which is good but not very subtle. Even the X-Men themselves are curiously anxious before going on the space rescue mission - one that seemed fairly tame compared to the incredible violence they experienced in Apocalypse. Still, the film is based on a solid idea: while the stakes are predictably high, it largely hangs on personal drama - how one mutant deals with her traumatic memories, and the way her mutant family responds, always well-intentioned but often backfiring. The villain is as bland and uninteresting as in the previous film, but Dark Phoenix wisely puts much more focus on the X-Men themselves. While it is largely missing the franchise's usually good, wry sense of humor - due to its absence rather than failed attempts, fortunately - the action is also improved, and it's (mostly) more restrained. The space shuttle rescue is exciting, and several sequences in the middle of the film - of the X-Men trying to rescue/capture Jean Grey - are more effective because of their brevity. The final battle goes longer, but its theme of fighting for each other - more than against an enemy - also makes it more engaging. It's difficult to ask a character/actor who was previously a mere supporting player to carry her own film - much less a franchise's finale - and while Dark Phoenix struggles with this, at under two hours long, it doesn't push it, either.
***
Dark Phoenix is not among the top X-Men films, but as I have written this review, I've realized it's also not half bad, either. Critics are scornful of it, with a 23% Rotten Tomatoes score, but I think it is far, far better than Apocalypse, which managed a 47%. Frankly, it's even better than the MCU's Captain Marvel (78% on RT) from earlier this year. And when you consider that this went through significant production development hell, the results are even more impressive. As a finale to the X-Men franchise, starting way back in 2000 and comprising ten films (not including Deadpool, which to me is its own thing), is it satisfying? Not entirely; the franchise has seen far higher quality, and the dark mood dampens any triumph. Still, its modest, fairly quiet ending is also appropriate and even positive in many ways, particularly the last scene between McAvoy and Fassbender bringing back memories of Stewart and McKellen. Certainly give this a try in theaters if you've been following the franchise; even if you're just in the mood for some good action, you could do far worse.
* By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60081715
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