My partner in viewing (aka the hubby) was so intrigued by my Godzilla 3D experience; we decided to enhance our Dark Phoenix experience with the upgrade of 3D.
As you all should be aware by now, movies based on comic books are not normally my “got to see it immediately” kind of movie. Although, I did enjoy Avengers End Game, I have come to realize my appreciation of End Game was a fluke.
In an effort to be “transparent” I saw the original X-Men and X2 and bits and pieces of several others. I didn’t feel I was lost in following the storyline, without seeing all the previous incarnations of X-Men.
Our story begins in 1975 with a young family driving on a winding road. Daughter in the back seat asks Mom, who is driving to change the radio station. Mom chides her with “When you get your license, you can decide what music to play”. Dad dutifully sides with Mom, however the radio station changes on its own. Mom changes back to her station, yet the music keeps changing. Mom and Dad exchange a look and ask their daughter, “are you doing this?” She says no, but begins to mumble “stop talking, stop talking” Mom suddenly is unconscious and BAM, the car has a head on crash with a truck. Mom is dead on the scene, Dad is badly injured but their daughter, Jean, is left without a scratch.
Dr Charles Xavier, shows up at the hospital, confirms with Jean that her parents are dead and offers her a place to stay. She is hesitant, Jean tells him, “You aren’t like the other doctors” he replies “You aren’t like the other patients” With that leap of faith, Jean agrees to follow Charles to a safe place for “special children”
Jump forward to 1992 and the Space Shuttle Endeavour is in trouble, spinning out of control in space. The President recruits Charles and a team of X-Men to save the shuttle crew. What was originally thought of as a solar flare, the shuttle is actually being torn apart by an interstellar planet eating force. The X-Men, lead by Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) manage to save the entire crew, but not before Jean (Sophie Turner) is enveloped by the radioactive blast of the alien force. It’s at this point that Jean is given the nickname of Phoenix; she has cheated death by surviving the lethal radioactive blast. But has she really escaped the blast unscathed? This is a really good part of the movie, all the X- Men using their powers to save the crew, especially being viewed in 3D. It’s early on, so my hopes were high for a continued good story.
However, this is where it starts to fall apart with a silly storyline of aliens who were following the interstellar planet eating force, who are now after Jean, who is now considered their new leader. They of course want to turn Jean, dark side and take over Earth.
The blast has reawaken past memories, Charles had suppressed in the younger Jean. Now, unable to control her anger, she rages on burning her bridges with the X-Men, and them with the government.
There are so many movie cliché’s “You’re always sorry and there’s always a speech. But nobody cares anymore.” And “When I lose control things happen ... bad things ... to people I love”
What line I did like was Raven schooling Charles” The women are always saving the men around here. Maybe you should change the name to X- Women” You go Raven!! And women do rule in Dark Phoenix, Raven, Jean and the alien leader Vuk, played by Jessica Chastain, who runs thru rubble in stilettos and her perfect blown out hair never looses its shape. Have to find out what products she uses.
The storyline is weak and for being the finale in the current X-Men universe, I felt it was a bit phoned in. The whole action sequence in NYC where everyone is converging to kill Jean, was way to long and silly. What’s with pulling the subway car out of the street, it’s just not worthy of this movie. I felt like someone had been wanting to put that in a movie, and there was a filler needed, “Hey lets throw in the subway car” Sure!!
I did enjoy Jennifer Lawrence, but like her character, she seems to just want out as quickly as possible. James McAvoy, was a kind of been there done that performance. Sophie Turner, as the lead character, was okay, but she didn’t inspire me. I feel bad for real lovers of the X-Men series; they must be disappointed in this finale.
For me, I didn’t have a lot invested, the 3D helped, but to me, Dark Phoenix is rated a C+.
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