X-Men: Dark Phoenix (4 Stars)

I gave this film five stars when I watched it in the cinema two years ago. That was too much. It's not as good as "First Class" or "Days of Future Past". 

I'm not sure whether the last four X-Men films are consistent with one another concerning Jean Grey's timeline. I suspect there's an error with her being eight years old in 1975, but I'll need to rewatch the films in order to check for errors. Some people call the films starting with "First Class" a reboot, but that's not correct. It's telling stories in the past that lead up to the events of the initial X-Men trilogy. Of course, the events of "Days of Future Past" rewrote the timeline, so the events of "X-Men 3" never happened. That's the film in which we first saw Jean Grey become Dark Phoenix. Now it happens again, this time earlier. How many years earlier is unclear. In this film she became Dark Phoenix in 1992. In "X-Men 3" no date is stated, but we can assume it took place round about the time when the film was released, i.e. 2006.

The Dark Phoenix story is told more accurately than in "X-Men 3", although it still deviates significantly from the comic book stories. The Phoenix force in "X-Men 3" was an innate mutant power, but in "Dark Phoenix" it's something that possesses her. In the comics there were actually two stories, the Phoenix Saga (X-Men #101 to #108) and the Dark Phoenix Saga (X-Men #129 to #138). The first saga shows how she received the Phoenix force and used it for good, while the second saga shows how she lost control of the Phoenix force and used it for evil.

I've read that it was originally planned to make two films, a two-part story. That would have been much better and would have done the original stories justice. Sadly, the film studio blocked this. 20th Century Fox was in too much of a hurry to reboot the X-Men, and this was the last film, so it had to round things off. I find it highly unusual to talk about a reboot before a film is made. What are the film studios up to?

There's a hint at the end of the film that Jean Grey has survived, but who cares if the series is going to be rebooted anyway?

Not as many X-Men members are shown as in the previous films, just a team of six members, without Wolverine around to hog the spotlight for himself. This offered a chance for strong character development, but the chance was missed. Apart from Charles Xavier (Professor X) we only spend time with Hank McCoy (Beast). Mystique, Cyclops, Storm, Nightcrawler and Quicksilver are all blank characters. If we hadn't seen the previous films we wouldn't know who they are. An extra 30 minutes running time would have solved the problem.

Success Rate:  - 0.7

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