It is time to bid farewell to Fox s version of the merry mutants and while it was a mostly fun ride – with a few major exceptions thrown for good measure – I cannot in good conscience throw this one among them as other critics did.
X-Men: Dark Phoenix is the last ride of the lead superhero franchise whose rights were bought from Marvel in the 90s…and I must say, while it is an admittedly underwhelming one, it is not for any reason a terrible one. It has jarring continuity errors (most distracting being Mystique’s appearance and the absence of the amazing uniforms present at the end of the last movie) and a rather dull villain which can be chalked up to last minute changes done due to the actual planned villains being taken by Captain Marvel’s movie, but could have easily been avoided had the actual comic villains for the arc that is being adapted – and I use “villain”very loosely here – the avian Shi’ar which would have been at least visually interesting.
Having said that, the movie managed to capture the ethics represented in said comic arc and the characterization of most of the cast down to a T. It was surely a far better adaptation of the arc than the previous attempt in X-Men: The Last Stand. Had there not been continuity hiccups in the past, had the stakes felt higher and had this movie not been the last in the franchise, and more importantly, had it not been released to contend against Marvel s Avengers Endgame, it would have proved probably far better.
Raphel Borg