Dark Phoenix

I hate critical response to X-Men movies. I'm just going to get that out of the way. At least where I'm concerned none of the critics seem to have any understanding at all of what I want out of an X-Men movie.

To be fair to them I'm not always totally certain myself, but watching Dark Phoenix may have actually cleared up some of it. You may have already guessed that I'm going to be taking a different stance on this movie than most of the published reviews, and you would be right. What annoys me is this is the third main release X-Men movie in a row (so we're not counting Deadpool and Logan in that) where the critics and I diverge so vastly.

To cut right to the chase, then, I did enjoy Dark Phoenix. As a fan of the 90's X-Men cartoon, the comics of the early 2000's, and the prime timeline X-Men movies (except Origins, that can go die in a fire), I was happy with the way the characters were handled, the way the story unfolded, and the fact that I finally have a Phoenix on the big screen I can point to and say "THAT'S what I always imagined." The movie isn't perfect, sure, but none of the issues were fatal. Maybe it's just because we've been given truly amazing X-Men movies in the past and the baggage of comparison still sticks with some people, because this movie was objectively better than Aquaman, for example, yet the response has been far more tepid, or even adversarial, to Dark Phoenix.

So what are all the critics complaining about? There's a few things. Jessica Chastain's villain is lousy. Another emotionless barely-developed evil person out to destroy the world for reasons that could be conservatively referred to as "existent". She was, for me, the absolute low-point of the film, but I kinda knew that she would be going in considering the trailers did nothing to make her look compelling. There's also the lack of much of the dark humor we've come to expect from the quality X-Men films, which honestly would have been appreciated. The movie was paced very quickly, which probably explains that lack of humor, and there were a few other problems that were introduced as a result. Very little time during the emotional high-points to sit with the characters and reflect. Probably not enough time observing the Phoenix Force to understand why it was doing what it was doing. No Quicksilver scene.

But there were upsides to the quick pacing as well. The movie never feels like it's dragging because it never slows down. The action is all engaging and never pushes you into action fatigue. The core emotional moments of the movie hit hard because you don't have time to luxuriate in them coming even though with hindsight they're pretty heavily telegraphed. Yes, the loss of a Quicksilver scene hurt, and the fact that they basically wrote him out of the second half of the movie hurt more. But we did finally get a good Nightcrawler scene! Not as excellent as the opening to X2, but still...

And then there's the high point of the whole First Class timeline; the casting. I love this cast. I loved the original cast too, and for the X-Men they were given they were perfect. But the Dark Phoenix story is one filled with loud, raw emotions, and I don't think the controlled and subtle personas of the prime timeline cast would have worked to portray it.

I'm still not blaming them for The Last Stand. That wasn't any of their faults.

Dark Phoenix is sold by the performances of the actors. Everyone (aside from Chastain, but I'm not really sure that's her fault, her character was just bad) turned in excellent performances. All of the emotional leaps, the couple of motivation disconnects, the bits where the pacing failed to drop out of hyperspace, they all held together because of the strength of that cast.

And in the end that's a good thing. They kept everything from spinning out of control, and managed to make the film come to a satisfying conclusion. Which is also good, because the future of these Fox-produced X-Men movies is up in the air at the moment after Disney's majority stakeholder purchase, but which is also incredibly sad, because I love the X-Men. I love this cast, I love the way the characters bounce off of each other, and I love that I got to watch them become these people over the course of years.

Whatever the next step for the X-Men is, I'll watch it. But if it doesn't involve any of these people, at the very least I got to see them fix the Dark Phoenix story after the way The Last Stand mangled it. As a parting gift to fans of the X-Men, that is pretty special.

My only serious gripe with the film was Hans Zimmer's score. It's fine in context, but cannot stand on its own and failed to deliver in the emotional moments of the film. Do... do you think we could convince the studio to release a cut of the film that uses John Powell's score from The Last Stand instead?

Because then the movie would actually be perfect.