The grand penultimate finale to FOX’s near 20 year long live-action X-Men franchise is here in X-Men: Dark Phoenix. In a bit of a ‘First Class’ revamp of a previous live-action attempt “Dark Phoenix” once again adapts the classic X-Men comic storyline of Jean Grey becoming the Phoenix; a powerful mutant with pyrokinetic abilities.

X-Men: Dark Phoenix is a 2019 superhero film, it is produced by 20th Century FOX & Marvel Entertainment, and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. It is currently available on home media. 

Editor’s Note: A review copy of X-Men: Dark Phoenix was provided by 20th Century FOX/Walt Disney Pictures in support of this review. Medium to near complete spoilers for X-Men: Dark Phoenix may be present within this review.

With the film rights of the X-Men & Fantastic Four now belonging to Disney & Marvel Studios following the sale of 20th Century FOX & its assets, we only have one film remaining in FOX’s live-action adaptation of the former superhero IP; The New Mutants which is set to launch next year in time for the franchise’s 19th anniversary. The second to last film ‘Dark Phoenix’ follows a storyline FOX had adapted in the original franchise, but this version of course features the younger ‘First Class’ era cast. While Dark Phoenix is a large step up from the initial attempt, it’s still not to the quality expected of the more than talented cast & crew on board.

THE GOOD: Nine years have passed since the events of X-Men: Apocalypse. After surviving worldwide damage the X-Men have now been regarded as heroes and have been given the full trust of the world governments to handle missions that need a little more effort than capable by normal human beings. The film opens with one such mission as a group of astronauts have had their ship struck with solar flare-like energy and the President has enlisted Professor Xavier and his X-Men for help. The latter take the X-Wing which has yet to be tested for space flight out in an attempt to save the astronauts with a team consisting of Quicksilver, Nightcrawler, Jean Grey, and others. With the rescue underway the solar energy seemingly returns hitting Jean as she’s activating her powers to stall the ship from crashing into the X-Wing. As the group struggle to retrieve Jean and return to Earth her powers begin to undergo a strange effect from the energy. Celebrating a job well done the X-Men return to the school, but suddenly Jean’s powers begin to go out of control. She is then visited by an alien named Vuk who helps her slowly control what she has dubbed the “Phoenix Force” and is also manipulating her, while Vuk’s race is plotting to eventually take the power from Jean. This leads to a dividing battle between Magneto, Xavier, and their own band of mutants on Jean Grey’s ultimate fate.

Hans Zimmer’s amazing soundtrack being played throughout the film is an absolute highlight of Dark Phoenix, I’d even go out of my way to say it’s one of the reasons to actually check the film out. When his music plays during a cool action sequence you feel everything sync together in a way that’s rare for any movie let alone superhero movies. It’s a shame Zimmer has seldomly lent his talent to the genre as it feels like a missing link sorely needed to step it up a notch. Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, and Sophie Turner took total control of this film from an acting perspective and tried their damnedest to keep everything together from start to finish with their stellar performances. Jessica Chastain also deserves an honorable mention for her portrayal of main antagonist Vuk. 

THE BAD: There’s a lot to like about Dark Phoenix honestly, but certain aspects of the film are a bit insulting to comic fans. A prime example is the weird character change for Beast; a mutant whose supposed to have the heart of gold despite his outward appearance suddenly wants Jean Grey dead after what’s clearly an accidental death of Mystique. One could use the “emotions got in the way” argument, but that excuse doesn’t work for a character like Beast. Other glaring character issues like that appear throughout the course of the film too. It also feels like half of the cast is bored midway through.

OVERALL THOUGHTS: Dark Phoenix is a decent superhero film, but it wants to be a good X-Men film and that’s it’s problem. Characters get weird edits for no reason and there’s a lot of uneven writing that breaks apart the good and bad of the film into too many moving pieces to hold fair sized segments together. Otaku Dome gives X-Men: Dark Phoenix a 70 out of 100.