11/13/2022 0 Comments Dark phoenix![]() When the action jumps forward to 1992, Jean (once again played by Queen in the North, Sophie Turner) has become one of the most dependable upperclassmen at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, where she continues to assist the academy’s eponymous headmaster (James McAvoy) in his lifelong campaign to establish a lasting harmony between powerful mutants and the masses who fear them. As tiresome as it is to see yet another film that opens with a car wreck, Kinberg and his stunt/effects teams deserve credit for staging a crash that’s tactile without being indulgent, and scarring enough to shadow the rest of the plot. Faster than you can “Shazam!,” little Jean comes face to face with her powers and causes the fatal accident that will haunt her as an adult. It’s 1975, and a young redheaded girl named Jean Grey is sitting in the backseat of her parents’ car and unconsciously changing the radio station with her psychic abilities (enjoy those two bars from “Werewolves of London,” because it’s all downhill from there). “Dark Phoenix” starts with death, and it’s the first of many scenes that have the bad luck of being very similar to moments from other, better superhero movies from earlier this year. Diluted blockbusters are a dime a dozen these days, and this one at least has the decency to clock in at less than two hours, but there’s something especially grim and epochal about watching an undead franchise try to force its way through a story that hinges on the prospect of resurrection. #DARK PHOENIX SERIES#Without question, however, the most damning thing about “Dark Phoenix” is that it feels like it’s exactly the film that 21st Century Fox (RIP) had in mind when they hired franchise screenwriter Simon Kinberg to step behind the camera: safe, insubstantial, and skirting the surface of powerful ideas that even the kid-friendly animated series was unafraid to tackle. Sundance Sets Tone for Increasingly Crowded Best Documentary Feature Raceħ New Netflix Shows in October 2022 - and the Best Reasons to Watch #DARK PHOENIX MOVIE#'My Father's Dragon' Review: Even Cartoon Saloon's Most Generic Movie Is Still Magical 'Please Baby Please' Review: Andrea Riseborough Cuts Loose in Madcap '50s Fantasy #DARK PHOENIX HOW TO#Not only does it waste an excellent cast on a script that reduces all of its characters to basic constructs, it also puts them at the mercy of a first-time director who doesn’t even know how to make them look cool. Not only does it botch the source material’s signature narrative arc, it also does everything in its power to flatten it out. Not only does the movie fumble the baton pass between generations and fail to advance the series’ overarching story in any meaningful way, it also hardly seems to try. “Dark Phoenix” isn’t the first event-free event movie of the mega-franchise era, but this one is different - it’s a perfect storm of pointlessness. The brazen needlessness of the twelfth film in the “ X-Men” saga is nothing less (and nothing more) than a direct breach of that contract it’s like watching a superhero movie with the lights on. The movie industry is sustained by a silent contract between Hollywood and its audience, which stipulates studios and ticket buyers will both spend too much of their money to sit together in a room so dark that no one can see the line that separates art from commerce. If “ Dark Phoenix” feels like the nadir of 21st century blockbuster cinema, that’s not because it’s the worst film of its kind - hell, it’s not even the worst installment of its franchise - but rather because it might be the only $200 million tentpole that has no evident reason to exist. ![]()
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