Before I go into my reasons why, this movie is bad. Not dumpster fire bad like I was expecting, but it was definitely bad. After the movie ended, my wife made note of my exasperated sigh. When I think about how many X-Men movies we've had, this movie makes me spectacularly sad. In my eyes, we have had way more bad X-Men movies than good ones. If I take away X-Men universe films (Wolverines and Deadpools), we are left with an underwhelming bunch. This movie marks the seventh in the mainline X-Men movies. I can say I legitimately loved two of them. After this movie, that count remained at two.
After X-Men: Apocalypse, I thought I had read that Jennifer Lawerence, James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender were done with these movies. Imagine my surprise when they all came back for this. The money must have been real good. I think especially egregious was Lawerence, because I don't think she liked having to go through all that makeup. The three of them are good actors, but I feel like they were sleepwalking in this movie.
Let me get more specific on my dislikes in this movie. What made X-Men: First Class so great was the friendship between Xavier and Magneto. McAvoy and Fassbender had a chemistry that made you believe this relationship. Then in these last few movies, they go out of their way to have them at odds from afar, occasionally sharing the screen together. Surprise, surprise, you don't see them together a lot in this movie either. It is such a waste. So that leaves Sophie Turner as Jean Grey to carry this movie. The last movie was her first appearance, so to say this movie doesn't earn this storyline is an understatement. For her evil turn to work, you have to be invested in her to feel some kind of emotional impact.
For any casual comic book fan, the words "Dark Phoenix" tell you all you need to know on what is going to happen. Unlike X-Men 3, they at least introduce a cosmic entity as the Phoenix. However, they did it all in the most clunky way possible. I think this is another apt description for this movie, it is klunky.
This movie introduces some ideas, but don't follow up on them. For instance, at the beginning of the movie, they are beloved. The world has accepted them, everyone loves them and dresses like them. Professor X has a freaking bat-phone (with an X) that the president of the United States uses to reach out to him. Then Jean Grey happens and the world turns on the X-Men real quick. All of a sudden there are talks of concentration camps and sending the mutants there. Right here is where they could have done some real exploring. They could have shown the horrors of this and how rounding up people because they look a certain way is wrong. In this climate, it could have hit home. Instead it's an afterthought and swept away. Magneto/Xavier are all about helping mutants, so the fact they spend time fighting each other and not THAT is a problem.
Our main bad guys, other than Jean Grey, are a bunch of basically nameless/faceless aliens who are shape shifters. I realized this movie was made either before or after Captain Marvel, but Captain Marvel showed what a threat shape shifters could be that are living among us. This movie shows them and then practically ignores them. Having them act as mutants and systematically destroy the good will they have built up is another idea that would have been great to see. The X-Men work best when the world fears and hates them. Instead, these villains are as one note as it gets. They want the power that destroyed their planet to...destroy others I guess? I don't even know why Jessica Chastain was here. Maybe she owed someone something, a la this scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiZRJjfiQdM
All of the X-Men that appear here are stripped down to their power set. We know nothing about Cyclops, Nightcrawler and Storm based on the few movies they have been in. Yet they are thrust into being the main team. You add Mystique, Beast and Quicksilver to this motley band and it is a line up that would feel weird even in the comics. Quicksilver has proven to be the best character the past few movies in the way they use his power set. Here he gets taken out early and we don't see him again. Speaking of previous movies, remember we had Psylocke right? Yeah, she isn't in this movie. Going back to my previous point, Storm is illustrates the idea the most. She is resorted to shooting a lot of lighting and maybe a cold wind here and there. The actress was doing her best with an African accent, but since she didn't have that many lines we don't hear it. These movies have yet to get Storm right. Nightcrawler, a character who also has a compelling background is just the guy that can teleport. Then there is Cyclops. Dude shoots lasers and he's in a relationship with Jean Grey. That's about all you get of him.
Instead we get into Jean's backstory, which as I mentioned before, other than knowing this movie revolves around an old X-Men storyline, there was no particular reason it HAD to be her. They want to impress me, have the Phoenix force go into someone else. Take Xavier for example. How big of a twist would it be if he were the main antagonist in this movie. The father turning on his children? Now that would have been gold. Other than getting to look mad, this movie didn't do Sophie Turner any favors. I also want to add that it is a cop out to say that the Phoenix made Jean Grey bad. When you find out what Xavier did, she had a justifiable reason to be pissed. You can't paint it away with a deus ex machina brush.
What makes me love the Marvel movies, but also hate on this movie is fight choreography. The fight scenes in this movie were boring. Having Xavier an active participant in the fights, cheapens them. Also, watching X-Men fighting nothing bad guys doesn't help. With all these power sets, we should have seen a lot more from these guys. Instead this is super hero 101 fare and the Avengers movies show that you can have fight scenes with real tension. I didn't care what happened to anyone here.
Speaking of caring about what happened, there was one major death in this movie. I already told you'd there would be spoilers, so read on at your own risk. So anyways, they kill Mystique and it happens pretty early on. You just knew Jean Grey would have to kill someone to prove that the stakes were risen. When it happened to Mystique, I surprisingly felt nothing. I feel like it was forecast pretty heavily and the way that handled it didn't really help much. I thought that she would have been the first of many. They made it seem like Magneto and Xavier would be next, but the movie didn't have the courage to go through with it like they should've. That would have given this movie a lot more emotional weight, which turns out it desperately needed. Losing all three of those would have been something.
Now let's get to Magneto real quick. It seems like every movie he goes from bad guy to good guy or vice versa. He was a compelling character in X-Men: First Class. Since then, he's the guy you bring in to propel the story along and help raise the stakes. What is he going to do this time? Who knows? Let's watch and find out! Four movies in, it's tired. It is a complete waste of Fassbender.
While I still have another stop on the complain train, I also want to mention how annoying it is that both Beast and Mystique have this penchant for returning to a more "human" form a lot. I get it. The actors want their faces to be seen and not be hidden behind tons of makeup. At some point though, you are playing a character and we don't have to see your face. We know it is you under there. From a story perspective, it's also dumb. Some of your tension as a mutant is lost when you can change back and forth at will. There's other mutants that can't. This important facet of X-Men lore in general is ignored when they do that. Not all of them can hide in plain site and it's disingenuous that they can. They are normal around each other, but go to their mutant selves in public? What??
I swear I am almost done. I didn't realize I had so much in me. I really hate that these movies don't respect their own timeline. It has been a problem across all the movies. They want to be cute and have the X-Men in each time period. If you do that, Xavier, Magneto and Beast should at least LOOK older. They look the same after thirty years in this time line. This may be my most nitpicky of nitpicks, but I can't ever let this one go.
Finally, it's a bummer to not be able to see some cool cameos of other X-Men. At least to my eyes, the only one that mattered was an appearance of Dazzler. I'll ignore that she was in her disco getup in the 90's. Oh wait, I DIDN'T ignore it. Look, I'm not perfect!
I ended up saying a lot more about this movie than I had intended. Was it therapeutic for me? Absolutely. Now I can move on with my life. Now that Disney owns this franchise, I can only hope for good things in the future. It certainly can't get much worse. Please don't do like I do and spend money on this. Go see something else. I'm doing YOU a favor.
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