Spoilers Dark PhoeniX - Review and Discussion Thread

Well, reading the reviews has moved me from "I'm not sure I ever want to see this" to "I kind of want to see this but am worried I'll regret doing so"...

 

I've always assumed Charles, Raven, and Erik were all in their 20s during the events of First Class, and their first students (Havok, Banshee) were likely teenagers at the time. Hank might be several years younger than Xavier. A decade later in 1972, DOFP, we were introduced to Pietro who claimed Erik was his father but never told him. Let's say Magneto was 38 and Quicksilver was 18 at the time. Then in Apocalypse, set in the 1980s, the three leads had to have been in their 40s, and in the 1990s, they would have passed their half- century mark.

I too wondered why the three main characters hadn't aged much over the years. The original Mystique played by Rebecca Romijn appeared to have matured slowly, partly because of her X genes. Charles and Erik never had the aged looks of Sirs Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen, respectively.

 

Magneto's age is determined by the fact that he was a child in WWII. In the comics he is de-aged and Charles is cloned into a younger body.

Professor X is in his 90s in Logan so you can work out a rough timeline. I tend to assume that the youngsters are 15 or 16 on first appearance.

 

The movie was okay, just underwhelming. Especially with the story it’s telling and the characters that appear. Apocalypse may have also been okay but at least it felt more grand in scope than this.

 

Most likely the real reason is that they didn't want to put McAvoy, Hoult and Fassbender in old age makeup and risk making it harder for them to act.

 

Or it's their nod to the comics sliding timeline. They're just being accurate to the comics they're based on in this instance.

 

Halston Sage was AH-Mazing.

The rest was pretty shitty.

Oh.

It's a very different movie after you remember that the big bad is Gwen Stacy, and this crappy film is just some weird Clone Saga Bullshit, so Spidey is going to show up any second and save the day.

 

Is that supposed to be a joke about Jessica Chastain and Bryce Dallas Howard looking similar? If not, it whooshed me. No shock there.

 

^^^
I didn't see that as out of character for either of them. Hank was there and saw it WASN'T an accident; and he had loved her at that point quite deeply for 31 years. To Magneto he loved her as long and she felt like a daughter to him, and as X-Men First Class showed, he was no stranger to taking revenge against those who killed those close to him. For Magneto, the part that I felt was out of character was Charles being able to talk him out of wanting to kill Jean Grey/Phoenix.

 

But it was, and no one tries to convince him otherwise. We're supposed to think of Hank as justified in his attitude when what happened to Raven was more accidental manslaughter than a deliberate attack.

And then he has the gall to talk to Charles like everything was due to him and his ego when what he had been doing was to continue to give the world a better view of Mutants. Meanwhile everything HANK does in the movie is motivated him his personal desired being put above the good of everyone else.

 

I enjoyed this film a lot. Yes it felt a little like just another franchise installment (a la Star Trek Beyond), and I'm not sure X-Men: The Last Stand's A-plot needed retelling at all, and there was far too little Magneto, but a good time was had.

One minor quibble: McAvoy appeared to be wearing an unnaturally-smooth skullcap for some of the movie, presumably for the re-shot stuff.

I teared up a little at the chess match at the very end, knowing this was the last time for these incarnations of the characters.

 

I'm seeing it tomorrow with my sisters. I feel that Apocalypse is an unnecessary movie equivalent to a post-script season, and my sisters are those weird people who think The Last Stand is one of the better X-Men movies. So, this oughta be interesting.

 

The setting for Logan had to be in the near future, 2020s or later, where we could see self driving trucks and other signs of advanced technology. Xavier could have been a centenarian in that film.

 

I think he announces himself as a nonogenarian, so in his nineties. If Logan is set in 2029, then that makes sense. He would have been mid twenties in 1962 having completed a PhD compared to Magneto's late twenties.

 

This is what I had planned to write:
Nearly 20 years ago X-Men started its movie franchise proving you could do Superheroes on the screen in such a way that mainstream audiences wouldn't be scared away. But at the end it would've probably benefited from the freedom newer movies have and really gone all out. I don't always agree with the "bigger bigger bigger" approach but this story would've worked well with it.

Then I read this which is maybe telling:
https://io9.gizmodo.com/dark-phoenixs-simon-kinberg-took-inspiration-from-nolan-1835308312
I'm kind of curious what this movie would've been if they weren't worried about stepping toes on the other Marvel movies.

 

Hank's attitude only makes sense if Charles made him aware of the alternate timeline. If he knows how dangerous she can be then his overreaction makes some sense.

 

According to the kid that played Cyclops, the original ending featured a battle against the Skrulls at the UN headquarters in New York.

 

I'm guessing Charles and Erik are about the same age, and if they were born at least in the mid-1930s, e.g. circa 1935, then their age fits the narrative.

1940s, World War 2: 6 to 10 years old*
1962, The Cold War, Cuban Missile Crisis: 27
1972, DOFP: 37
1983, Apocalypse: 48
1992, Dark Phoenix: 57
2000s: 60s to 70s
2010s: 70s to 80s
2023, Sentinel War (Alternate Timeline): 88
2029, Logan: 94

(*Some mutants manifest their powers way before their teens, as was the case with Jean Grey.)

I previously stated that Magneto and the Professor must have been in their 20s during the 1960s, but yes, they were also in their 30s during that decade.

For Magneto to be 65 in Dark Phoenix, which is set in 1993, he had to have been born around 1928. And as it's already been pointed out, they don't look their age.

 

I don’t know why they wanted to use Skrulls. Plenty of other aliens they could have used.

 

No joke.

I guess I'm not going to be called to the morgue to identify either of those woman after they bite it