"X-Men: Dark Phoenix" Review: A Grievous Goodbye From A Nearly-20-Year-Old Franchise

X-Men has been always a top-selling brand since 2000, the stories about special X-Men at Xavier school has always attracted a huge number of loyal fans when hitting theatres. However, after Wolverine (by Hugh Jackman) left the game, the fans’ amenity went down. In addition, X-Men: Dark Phoenix destroyed what the audience expected.

X-Men: Dark Phoenix: The main plot

X-Men: Dark Phoenix started after X-Men: Apocalypse when X-Men have been recognized around the world. When saving endangered astronauts outside the universe, X-Men face a universe identity called Phoenix that chose Jean Grey (by Sophie Turner), their most powerful and formidable foe. Jean is out of control of spiraling and hurts the people she loves the most.

She starts to unravel the fabric holding X-Men together. Then, with her family falling apart, the X-Men team must find a way to reunite to save Jean Grey’s soul as well as protect the Earth from aliens desiring to rule the galaxy.

X-Men: Dark Phoenix: Wish the storyline would be more united

The plot of X-Men has gone far away from the origin of the comic, so director Simon Kinberg could not attach to the comic to develop the storyline. Instead, Dark Phoenix created itself a scrappy script based on the previous part X-Men: Last Stand (2006).

Director Simon Kinberg was too hurried when putting an alien race without any explains. One more regretful thing is that instead of a great battle with full of characters as in Avengers: Endgame but actually, we just saw that only 4 X-Men fight with quite weaker enemies. Even Phoenix is just an image throughout the film.

X-Men: Dark Phoenix: Some characters are forgotten

Director Simon Kinberg did not take advantage of each character’s story such as how Magneto changes from a terrorist to a hidden farmer or how the brilliant Ph.D. X sacrifices himself for all or other stories of young X-Men and came to the main problem.

Characters’ personalities are not clearly developed so the audience felt that the characters are not deep in their roles.

“Brother” Magneto carries the whole X-Men: Dark Phoenix

Though other characters are not developed, Magneto (by Michael Fassbender) is the most nominated character when he shows Magneto’s cold and merciless image.

Besides, Cyclops by Tye Sheridan and Nightcrawler by Jodi Smith-McPhee are better contributed with clear characters.

2019 is a year of sad goodbyes to some blockbuster franchise such as Avengers, the Night Watch, Game of Thrones, the Skywalkers and the latest incarnation of X-Men. And, X-Men: Dark Phoenix is a solid end rather than a spectacular goodbye.

>>> The New Mutants Full Movie Download: After Being Delayed For Years, Is This X-Men Film A Success?