(2.5 / 5)
X-Men: Dark Phoenix is the best example of a movie that suffers from an improper title and sloppy direction. The X-Men are now in 1992 now with a favorable view in the world and a mission places Jean Grey in contact with a force that imbues her with cosmic powers, or does it? See, the movie doesn’t really know.
An sloppy timeline
The break down begins almost at the beginning as the events take place in 1975, two years after the events of Days of future past and yet Professor Xavier is not behaving as a mutant who is in full control of his abilities. We are provided information that Jean has latent abilities that she has difficulties controlling and its not until exposure to the “force” that she begins to act out. She already did that in X-Men: Apocalypse! Tension is manufactured to move the plot forward and characters are introduced with no exposition as to why.
The lesson of continuity
The X-Men franchise rebooted their timeline to fix continuity so they could have stretched out this story to provide the proper vision, or not tell it at all. There is a lot of potential in a story where a mutant is not in control of their powers and the X-Men are in turmoil with how to address that. The segments where Hank, Erik and Charles respectively called back to their past worked because it showed an authentic thread of growth. Simply slapping a title on something for fan service and being messy with the timeline to get there will no longer work.
In the end
The Dark Phoenix wasn’t even dark. It was more sad. This was not the way to end the X-Men franchise, but I do take solace in knowing that Marvel has the franchise proper now. I await to see what happens next.