X-Men: Dark PhoeniX Rate and Review Thread (spoilers in spoiler tags)

Just about every summer blockbusters except Aladdin is underperforming. The films this season are cannibalizing each other.

 

Yeah, maybe pacing issues, is a better description. The first part was slow then everything sort of zipped by after that space sequence and rushed to the end.

 

I think the audience is starting to want more original concept, but Hollywood hasn’t gotten the message. The whole sequel movement of the last few years is getting tiresome.

 

It'll be fine. Lion King was always gonna be the king of the box office this year along with Avengers.

 

Saw this yesterday and given all the talk about it I was expecting a hair pullingly offensively stupid and poorly done movie with terrible dialog, terrible production values and terrible performances.

And... Saw none of that. So... Bull**** fanboy hyperbole strikes yet again, where product that is mediocre or middle of the road is somehow a crime against all art on every conceivable level and things which are good or even great get placed on a plateau akin to divinity and beyond any reasonable criticism whatsoever.

It's so ****ing tiring...


There will never be an honest reading of this movie I think claiming it was a masterpiece of super hero cinema. It has an all around flatness and feels rushed. I can totally believe the idea it was supposed to be a two part send off of the Fox Mutant films which had to be drastically rejiggered (in what is a seeming to be a common sequence of events for CBMs outside of the MCU) due to studio executives and bean counters deciding, partially in response to the loudest and most militant voices making their opinons known via social media (like the Hype) making their displeasure known for such extended and widespread a time, to cut the legs off underneath the film making reshoots and rewrites necessary. And even then what has been delivered is just... bland, not a dumpster fire.

The movie's content by a wide margin is in no way totally incompetent. The production values aren't bad, music is good, cinematography is fine and the performers are for the most part fine with dialog that isn't either terrible or cheezy.

Does that mean it's a good CBM worth seeing again? No. Because nothing is offensively bad it's just the story, the plot, the arcs the emotional heft... It's all rather flat and very by the numbers. There is nothing Razzie worthy but I can't say it amounts up to anything particularly interesting or engaging either. There is an attempt to make some statements about certain characters but that mostly goes nowhere. It's injected into the film bit then the follow up is just restating it and then it doesn't go anywhere. Some characters while not handled badly are just more or less background.

My feelings towards this and the seeming widespread response I have seen mirrors how I felt about Green Lantern. GL was a very mediocre movie that was essentially a greatest hits of super hero films that just failed to hit the mark because it was so often just humdrum and lifeless. But it wasn't cast badly and despite all the yelling online about it the effects, yeah even the CGI suit, are not bad. It's just a dull film which could never get over a merely servicable and uninspired script. Same with Dark Phoenix.

The Fox X-Men films were a mixed bag right from the start. I will always try to remind fans how they did contribute greatly to the super hero film movement as a whole and gave us some truly iconic castings in roles people wanted to see come to life on the big screen for years and years. It is no doubt disappointing to see the X-Men proper go out with such a whimper with a very forgettable movie. At the same time that's all this was... Mediocre and forgettable. A flat film which just didn't gel together the way it was conceived to. But it's not some gigantic misfire either.

 

For what it's worth, I tend to listen to reviews like this more than the "OMG! BeSST EFFER" or the "Atrocity on par with (insert real human tragedy here" reviews.

It seems like it's just there, which isn't a CRIME. I just think this franchise should have went out on a high note. I think DoFP is the one I'll always consider as "The End".

 

The Half in the Bag guys said it brilliantly, it seems like movies can't just be "okay" anymore. Everything is either the best or the worst thing ever. Dark Phoenix is the perfect example of an "ok" movie.

 

I don't think they are cannibalizing each other. I think each one just isn't good that people don't want to see them.

 

I don't know if I can even call DP 'ok' since while I didn't hate the movie overall I felt it suffered from a myriad of severe problems in terms of story, pacing, and writing that I can't give it the 'okay' pass
When I think of a perfect example of an 'okay' film I think of something in the vein of Solo(which also bombed) or even Captain Marvel. DP for me is one of the franchise's weakest films but I certainly don't think its the worst film of the franchise(Origins I'm looking at you) I also think its there's some of the franchises worst moments in it. I have to say I'd rank even Apocalypse and Last Stand over it, and it barely loses to Origins as the worst film in the franchise for me. DP isn't a Fan4stic level disaster(though box office wise, it kind of is) but I'd hard-pressed to say its an 'okay' film. I'd say its a pretty bad film with some redeeming moments in it.

But to each their own, I guess.

 

Disagree. Many critics were saying Aladdin wasn’t good but it opened pretty well. Critics are pretty much the only people that get to a see a movie before opening day and the general audience doesn’t pay attention to what they say, just look at Venom.

 

When you are marketed as the final film in a long running series your film is going to be judged far more harshly.

 

Aladdin is an animated classic with a story proven that works.

Dark Phoenix still hasn't worked on film.

 

Sort of did once:

 

Godzilla has plenty of times, but King of The Monsters bombed. Secret Life of Pets 2 is a sequel to a well-received film that opened at 100+ million and ended with a total of 800 million, that movie opened with less than half of that number.

 

Nah, the later cartoons definitely made this cringy storyline work.

 

That was an episodic series, though.

Of course I'm not laying blame on the story, the blame is on Fox and Simon Kinberg who don't understand how or why this story works.

 

Still translated fairly successfully...and the cartoon was a Fox cartoon, so clearly at some point there were people at Fox who had an idea how to tell that story.

 

But I said "on film". I don't know what part of that isn't getting across.

 

You also cited a cartoon.

And check yourself.

 

Aladdin was a movie, not a cartoon. I also told you the animated series was an episodic series.

Also, even if I gave that comparison any weight, this movie didn't evoke the cartoon at all. These movies never have.

 

Your direct quote was this:

If you did not want people to think about animated translations of stories, perhaps you should not have introduced them into the conversation. The only thing I pointed out was there was at least one animated version of the Dark Phoenix saga that seemed to work.

 

It’s not that Fox didn’t understand but rather that they didn’t care and just wanted to save money base on what I heard.

 

I never said I did not want people to think about animated translations.

I said Dark Phoenix hasn't worked on film / on a movie and I am not wrong about that?

Aladdin is a 1hr 30min movie and you're equating it to an episodic series that had several other seasons to develop its characters and also a previous 4-episode "Phoenix Saga" to precede it? This comparison doesn't work.

 

Because you say it does not work? Well...opinions vary.

 

The consensus is those adaptations did not work. It's not just my opinion.

Dark Phoenix is the culmination of a couple of moving pieces and stepping stones that Fox didn't invest time into and that has always been my opinion.