GamesRadar+ Verdict
Despite mostly sparky cast-work, the Phoenix never quite rises as hoped in Kinberg’s affectionate but of🐎ten perfunctory X-Men send-off.
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X-Men: Dark Phoenix review: "Never quite rises high as we hoped"
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Even in the context of Magneto elevating subway trains, X-Men: Dark Phoenix arrives with some heavy lifting to do. Not only does it land after another lit-up superhero and another franchise endgame: it also has to remedy writer/producer turned director Simon Kinberg’s earlier co-written riff on Chris Claremont’s comics saga, 2006’s brusque 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:X-Men: The Last Stand. Atonement for 2016’s top-heavy 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:X-Men: Apocalypse is another requirement. And, in addition, there’s the sizeable m🦄atter of concluding a 19-year film series, with its attendant emotional investments and crises❀ on planet continuity.
Though Kinberg finds some canny ways to lighten that load to a manageable weight, the knock-on effect often feels frustratingly under-nourished. Dialogue, characters and themes alike frequently emerge half-realised, the cosmic scope of Claremont’s comic and the expansive dash of superior X-films whittled away. Despite some impressive set-pieces and committed showings from the (outgoing?) 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:X-Men: First Class crew, 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:X-Men: Days of Future Past’s pop-art pizzazz and Logan’s aggressive emotional wallop are absent, resulting in an often b𒅌lunt franchise full-stop tha💝t only intermittently takes flight.
Kinberg’s smarter move is to counter the ill-balanced stodge of The Last Stand and Apocalypse with a tighter focus on Jean Grey. We begin in 1975, where young Jean manifests a latent urge to change the channel on her parents’ car radio… One tragedy later, the power of bullet-point plotting ushers us to 1992, where James McAvoy’s Charles Xavier dispatches a mutant team to save a space sh꧅uttle’s crew from a solar-flare encounter. This (impressively mounted) gamble nearly kills Jean (Sophie Turner); she survives, only to discover a new, mysterious force inside her – a force that makes her a target for some body-snatching aliens.
Sticking close to Jean, Kinberg anchors her fast-evolving rage in the realisation that Charles has tampered with her memories. A fresh screen take on Xavier emerges, arrogant and wide open to criticism from, especially, Jennifer Lawrence’s righteous Raven/Mystique. McAvoy makes the most of it, presentin🍸g a character of more facets than Glass’s Kevin Wendell Crumb without the gratuitous fireworks.
The real fireworks erupt in a confrontation with Jean, with fatal consequences for one X-favourite, a belly full of guilt for G𒊎rey and a divided determination to kill/save her from the X-crew. Michael Fassbender makes decently felt work of Erik ‘Magneto’ Lehnsherr here, again grief-wracked and tired of Charles’ apologetic speeches.
