15 Bizarre moments from the 20th Century Fox-Marvel era
By Mark Lynch
15. Phoenix…ish
The end of X2: X-Men United gave comic book fans a warm fuzzy feeling. Jean Grey sacrificed herself to save her family and, as the movie ends, we see a fire-link bird moving through the water. The entire movie hinted at Jean becoming the Phoenix, and this scene solidified what we were hoping for. We were all excited (or X-cited). This was before the 20th Century Fox movies started letting their fans down, and boy, did they drop the ball. The Phoenix, in this case, was more mutant powers than cosmic entity, which wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t tease us with the possibility of something greater.
The design of the Phoenix itself wasn’t bad, even if it did look more like evil Willow from Buffy the Vampire Slayer than cosmic destroyer of worlds. The problem stems from the way they teased her throughout X2. If Jean just went crazy due to her powers, no one would have batted an eye. It would have made sense since she’s a telepath. There were a few scenes when Jean looked amazing. Her destroying everyone at the end of the movie was terrific. She looked like one of the most dangerous beings in the world. But that wasn’t the Phoenix, and we definitely noticed how lackluster it was.