In Review: X-Men: Dark Phoenix (VOD)

Synopsis: When Jean Grey is struck by a mysterious cosmic force that transforms her into the iconic Dark Phoenix, the X-Men must unite to face their most devastating enemy yet – one of their own.

Review: Just released earlier in the week on Amazon Video ‘X-Men: Dark Phoenix’ finishes off the storyline, which was started in X-Men: First Class.

It also does a better job with the Dark Phoenix storyline than the inferior ‘X-Men: Last Stand’ did with it but enjoyed similar negative reviews when it was released. Which is one of the reasons I waited for the Video on Demand release.

Thankfully. It as a movie is nowhere near as bad as ‘Last Stand’ was, but it isn’t anywhere near as good as the previous movies to feature the First Class iteration of the X-Men.

The Story

When a NASA space mission hits some trouble. The President calls on the X-Men to help save the astronauts. When Jean Grey is asked to use her powers to hold the space shuttled together to save the ship’s engineer she is hit with a mysterious cosmic entity, which gradually taps into her rage.

The Acting

Sophie Turner puts in a very solid performance as Jean Grey as she gradually loses control and gives into her inner rage to become Dark Phoenix and the supporting players do their parts well.

Jessica Chastain makes for a rather bland villain in Vuk, which is no fault of Chastain given that she wasn’t given a great deal to work with and there wasn’t really a backstory for her or the D’Bari race that her character was supposed to lead.

Overall

The saving grace of this film is the acting given that it is very character-driven, which gives the actors lots to work with. But it all falls down when it comes to the film’s story in that we are left with far more questions than we are answers. Who are the D’Bari and what is their connection if any to the Dark Phoenix energy that their leader so seeks? I mean taking over the world and world domination is fine, but as a story point it is somewhat shallow.

The origin story of how Jean Grey came to join The X-Men was handled pretty well and the way the film calls back to that in order to explain away some of Jean’s rage which Dark Phoenix is tapping into was well executed, but it all fell down for me with the introduction of the D’Bari who seemed to come out of nowhere.

Now obvious most comic book readers will know the D’Bari from the Marvel comics, but the mainstream audience would not have a clue. But for fans that want to know more about these Aliens, you can always check out this explanation from Marvel Wiki.

Overall. X-Men: Dark Phoenix isn’t the best from the franchise, but it does work fairly well as a way to send off this iteration of The X-Men franchise. Like many people. I’d really like to see what Marvel Studios would do with a series of X-Men movies.