Kim's Movie Korner

Movie Review: Dark Phoenix

I’ve never particularly liked the character of Jean Grey.  Granted, Famke Janssen warmed me up to the character in the original films, I still find for all her power and ability she’s always been a bit “meh” as far as X-Men go.   Between the trailers and the high that Marvel films are currently riding I nonetheless was excited to see Dark Phoenix…right up until a few hours before movie time when a coworker, without provocation, decided to crap all over the film sight unseen (after all it’s written by Simon Kinberg of X-Men: The Last Stand (my least favorite X-Men film)) in addition to dropping some major spoilers.  With my expectations tempered and my enthusiasm waning I headed to the theater and hit the fan event for Dark Phoenix.

I’m not even going to try and sugar coat it, Dark Phoenix is a definite disappointment. 

It’s one of those films where all the elements seem to be there: decent storyline, good cast, big budget, great visuals, good soundtrack, beloved characters etc. yet it weirdly simply doesn’t gel into anything cohesive or remotely entertaining.  Everything about the film just falls flat, has no heart or soul, and left me completely disinterested and uninvested in the characters or events. 

Dark Phoenix makes X-Men: The Last Stand look like Infinity War by comparison.

The pacing and narrative are disjointed.  The dialogue eye rolling-ly dreadful.  The characterization nonexistent and/or unbelievable.  Weak/unexplained/undeveloped villains. So on and so forth.

The acting with the exceptions of Fassbender and McAvoy (doing their bests buy even they can only do so much) are wooden, phoned in, unimaginative, and forced.  Then there’s Sophie Turner fresh off her Game of Thrones stint.  I dunno what the hell happened with her.  Her performance is largely reduced to beauty close ups/extreme close ups of her crying in between shots of her looking like someone suffering from extreme constipation trying to pinch one out every time she loses control of her powers.  I’d rather have watched Summer Fontana as 8-year old Jean for the entire two hours. 

Dark Phoenix at its core has the worse thing going for it.  It’s boring.  For all the action sequences and cool visuals, the film as a whole just sits there, washes over you with little affect.  When you’re thinking “that’s cool” or “whoa, that’s exciting/intense” instead of feeling or experiencing those things, something has gone horribly wrong.  In this instance I had 113 minutes to contemplate what that was…

…I just didn’t care. 

You probably won’t either.  So, save your time and your money.  This one will be available for home viewing soon enough.  And when it is, I’m sure that perfect opportunity of there being “nothing else on” will appear.  Check it out then.  I’m giving this one an overly generous 4 and thanking my lucky stars I’ll be cleansing my palate with another viewing of Avengers: Endgame tomorrow.