Everything wrong with X-Men: Dark Phoenix

The X-Men movie series dominated the box office for close to two decades, flying a flag for the superhero genre at a time when it wasn't the undisputed cinematic titan that it is today. From 2000's X-Men all the way through to 2020's The New Mutants (a spin-off released after the franchise had essentially already ended), the X-Men were regulars of the silver screen.

The franchise's main film series came to an abrupt end in 2019 with the release of Dark Phoenix. It brought back most of the cast from the prequel movies, and was the second adaptation of the Jean Grey/Dark Phoenix storyline. Unfortunately, it was even more disastrous for the franchise than the first, receiving poor reviews and bombing at the box office, meaning that the legendary X-Men movie series ended on a pretty low note.

So, what went wrong with Dark Phoenix? That's an interesting question, because honestly it's not as bad as the dismal 22% Rotten Tomatoes score would suggest, but you can clearly see where the issues are and why audiences didn't respond to it so well. So, with that, let's dive into everything that went wrong with the franchise-closer.

The unnecessarily cruel death of Mystique

Mystique was one of the central characters of the X-Men prequel movies and that came as a pleasant surprise to fans of the character given how underutilized she was in the original trilogy. Jennifer Lawrence had a lot to do in order to make Raven such an important aspect of the film series, and she succeeded, with the character having an important role in First Class, Days of Future Past, and Apocalypse. It looked like that would continue in Dark Phoenix as she was actually leader of the X-Men, but shortly into the movie that all changed.

Mystique's death at the hands of Jean seemed unnecessarily cruel. Given where the character was in her life (happy to do good but tired of Charles' ways and ready to move on), it was wrong to kill her off in such a brutal way. It also did very little for the storyline outside of propelling Beast and Magneto to team up to kill Jean, but even that was quickly resolved as the team ultimately worked together to save her and stop the alien invaders.

Granted, Jennifer Lawrence was reportedly eager to move on from the character of Mystique, so that likely had some involvement here, but there were other ways to go about writing her out. The X-Men prequel series was all about respecting the characters that got overlooked the first time around, and Dark Phoenix somehow managed to be even more disrespectful to her. Now that is unforgivable.

The lack of Quicksilver

While there were plenty of fan-favorite characters among the younger crop of X-Men in the prequel movies, Peter Maximoff was among the most beloved. A wild card, Quicksilver would often turn up to assist members of the team when he was needed the most, acting as an outside force for good whenever he was called upon. He officially became a member of the X-Men in the closing moments of Apocalypse, which suggested we would see more of him in future movies. How wrong we were.

While Quicksilver is a part of the team in the opening act of Dark Phoenix, he is injured a great deal by Jean Grey when her rampage begins, which takes him out of action indefinitely. He does resurface in the film's final act when you can see that he's still recovering from his injuries. But that's... it.

Now, Peter's limited appearances were reportedly down to Evan Peters' shooting schedule as he was still appearing fulltime on American Horror Story at the time, so that is understandable. However, putting one of the most beloved of the young X-Men cast on the shelf so quickly meant that fans spent most of the movie disappointed at the way that the character was treated.

The dark tone

It's often fun when a franchise - be it movie or TV series - tries something different. For that reason, I can appreciate what Dark Phoenix was trying to do in order to present itself as a larger-than-life, darker thriller somewhat removed from the previous movies. But all you need to do is watch it (and understand how it failed at the box office) to know that this was not the right approach here.

From the removal of the "X-Men" title in most promotional material, to the lack of that iconic theme throughout the whole movie, Dark Phoenix desperately didn't want to be an X-Men movie. It was worse off for that decision, particularly because the first act of the movie was perhaps the most traditionally X-Men this franchise ever was; so the pivot into darker territory in its second half made the whole thing feel very joyless - and not in a good way.

Like I said, experimentation can be good for a franchise from time-to-time (look at how well Marvel Studios coped with WandaVision) but Dark Phoenix forsook all of the great things about the X-Men movies in a bid to masquerade as some kind of haunting thriller. There are moments where it really works but it doesn't sustain it; and honestly, it's not what a franchise this old should have been doing when all involved knew that its best days were behind it. As a result of this, the dark, grim approach (even with the admittedly gripping score by Hans Zimmer) was a final chapter that few wanted as it never got to celebrate all of what made the X-Men movies what they were.

Too much is happening, but nobody has anything to do

One of the biggest criticisms of X-Men: The Last Stand is that it took on too much. It's a valid criticism because the 2006 film attempted to juggle Jean Grey's Dark Phoenix story with other major storylines, particularly the rollout of the so-called "mutant cure". There was too much happening and both of those important storylines suffered because of it.

Sadly, Dark Phoenix falls into the same problematic territory. The titular storyline gets a bigger focus for sure, but it also has to balance that the arrival of the extra-terrestrial villains, Jean's childhood backstory, Charles Xavier's brush with arrogance, Mystique's death, and the fallout that stems from that. Needless to say it's too much and the film gives very little of it a chance to breathe.

Mystique's death, for example, is too rushed for the emotional gravitas of what happened to set in. Yes, it gets the emotional funeral scene (complete with heavy rainfall) in the same way that Charles got after his death in The Last Stand, but it goes by too quickly for the emotional weight to settle in like it should. We simply pivot to the rage that other characters feel as a result of it and even then, that is simply designed to move the plot forward.

Meanwhile, Scott Summers is at the center of the main storyline as he's in a relationship with Jean and yet he isn't given much to do beyond summoning his optic blasts when needed. Storm drops a few bolts of lightning on the bad guys, but that's about it. Even Magneto is off-screen until the movie's second half, and he's only brought back for a run-of-the-mill revenge plot to kill Jean for what she did to Mystique. And Beast never truly gets a moment to process the fact that he was legitimately going to kill one of the X-Men; he just changes his mind for the greater good.

Nobody will ever criticize Dark Phoenix for dragging but its incessant desire to move the story along highlighted how much it had to juggle. There is no room for anything to breathe and even less for its core characters to do much outside of reacting to what's happening around them. This robs the movie of the emotional gravity it needed to tell such an ambitious storyline.

Jean Grey doesn't feel like Jean Grey

One of the biggest problems in Dark Phoenix is that it is an adaptation of one of the X-Men's most iconic storylines with a version of Jean Grey at its core that simply never felt like Jean Grey. Let me be clear, this wasn't the fault of Sophie Turner, who really stepped things up after her previous outing in X-Men: Apocalypse, it was simply down to the questionable characterization and the rushed storytelling.

If this version of Jean had been on our screens for longer, it might have been more believable; instead, we got a relatively rushed portrayal of what should have been an extremely nuanced arc with a version of the character that fans weren't particularly sold on. Turner's performance in Apocalypse had been met with mixed reviews, but the characterization was off from the beginning. Though significantly better in Dark Phoenix, the film just doesn't serve the character well, leaving Turner to do much of the heavy lifting. She succeeds to an extent, but she's ultimately shackled by the storyline.

If the prequel movies had more installments to allow Jean to grow into her own and the audience to care more for these characters, a Dark Phoenix adaptation could have worked in the future; but it was too much, too soon, too quickly, and that prevented it from achieving even half of its full potential. There's so much more to Jean Grey, but this movie wanted to go to the Phoenix-shaped well for a second time at the expense of her own character.

The weak villains

Dark Phoenix leaned more into elements of horror and thriller than superhero and triumph, and there were moments were that really worked. The introduction of the film's alien foes definitely wore that skin well as it was unexpectedly haunting for the X-Men saga. But not even that could make the villains of the piece stand out; nor could Jessica Chastain's committed performance.

An alien race in search of the cosmic entity that Jean absorbed, they wanted to channel her powers for their own means (i.e. taking over the world). If she refused, they would take it from her anyway. This holds up relatively fine in writing, but the execution of it let it all down. It's all very surface level; the whispery aliens aren't all that interesting, and it's hard to take them seriously as a threat when the movie goes out of its way to showcase that the real threat is Jean and the corrupted Phoenix Force within her.

From a visual standpoint, the sight of them overrunning the train makes for a thrilling experience, but there is very little to go on outside of that. And the last-minute threat that they become doesn't feel worthy of the film when Jean had raised the stakes so high already. If the aliens had managed to capture the intensity of the train sequence earlier in the movie, they might have had a shot at convincing audiences they meant business, but the whispery dialogue and strutting around in business suits wasn't nearly enough to do that.

Again, this wasn't the original plan as the Hellfire Club were intially supposed to be involved in this movie (before it became clear that it would be a franchise-ender), but the backup plan wasn't convincing enough to make up for that.

Been there, done that

One thing that made X-Men: First Class so refreshing was that it gave the X-Men franchise a chance to do some new things. When Days of Future past came along, it doubled down on that, merging the past and the present together to create a new timeline that would give the series a clean slate to start over, ensuring that it could undo a number of mistakes and get it right this time. And then it went and repeated so many of them.

Dark Phoenix should have never happened because, after dropping the ball with the Phoenix storyline in The Last Stand, we didn't need to see another adaptation in the same franchise. What's worse is that The Last Stand was criticized for killing Jean Grey off, but Days of Future Past was able to undo it... only for Dark Phoenix to essentially do it all over again?

Granted, the 2019 film very much implies that she's still alive in Phoenix form (a giant Phoenix-shaped ball of energy) but it also very much leaves the X-Men in the same place that the original crew were after Jean died in the 2005 movie; distraught, broken and upset. It not only desecrates the new timeline, it wasted the opportunity of the clean slate, too.

Aside from that, there are other frustratingly recognizable story beats, like Charles doing his own thing and ignoring the advice of those around him (a Professor X trope it seemed that the younger version had mostly managed to avoid) and Magneto's revenge-driven mission to kill Jean very nearly turning him back to the dark side, which felt tired and exhausted at this point.

There was so much opportunity for fresh and new storylines, but Dark Phoenix ensured the franchise remained stuck in the most repetitive of cycles.

Wasted potential

It really must be said that there is a lot of good in Dark Phoenix. It's not always on display or out at the forefront, but it's there, trying to hold the movie together. As I've said before, it works on multiple occasions throughout, which honestly ensures that the movie isn't as bad as its reputation suggests.

But in the midst of all the questionable CGI and poor story decisions, its greatest sin might just be the potential that it wastes. There is so much of it there, from the young cast members who barely get a look in to the awful way that Mystique is written out of the franchise, and that leaves a bit of a bad taste in your mouth, honestly; because it could have been so much stronger if it had placed its focus elsewhere.

We've already discussed how it wasted Mystique and Quicksilver, but there were others who deserved more attention too. Tye Sheridan is incredibly underrated as Scott Summers as he has provided us with the best live-action portrayal of Cyclops so far, so it would have been nice to see him get a bit more focus (a more meaningful portrayal of Scott and Jean's relationship might have helped with that). The same goes for Alexandra Shipp; she's exceptional as Storm but we only get to see her in action in brief segments. And let's not forget Kodi Smit-McPhee's Nightcrawler, who proved to be the MVP of most battle sequences.

It would have been refreshing to see Dark Phoenix give those characters more to do instead of focusing on a tired old story that the franchise already got wrong once. But what we got ultimately left characters on the board, some of the actors seemingly phoning it in, and fans feeling short-changed all around. A sad end to a promising chapter in this iconic movie franchise.