Spoilers Dark PhoeniX - Review and Discussion Thread

[Dick Whitman]

The DVD and Blu Ray was released today. I did not even know that I went to the store for season 4 of Supergirl.

For a movie that was dismissed and I feel dumped out there by the studio it has a lot of bonus features.

Deleted scenes are mostly minor. There is optional commentary by Simon Kinberg on those. Plus full audio commentary on the film itself.

Biggest surpirse is 1 hour and 20 minutes behind the scenes documentary. It’s mini features that can be viewed alone or together. But that is still a lot of content. More and more studios are cutting back on that type of thing. Especially a film that Fox, Disney seemed to dump out there and many fans dismissed before ever seeing it.

I was a fan of this movie. I will certainly be watching it all. I am curious too on the commentary. Were they seeing this as an ending or hopeful for more when it was made?

 

[Tosk]

Are the mini features actual Making Of content, or the usual PR crud that passes for extra features these days?

 

[Dick Whitman]

It’s actual Making of content. When I wrote the first post I was just starting to watch it.

I was skeptical to before hand. Often these mini features watched back to back feel disjointed. With separate credits and often repeated footage from segment to segment.

This is not like that at all. It’s completely smooth transition. No credits, all unique footage. It clearly was made to be viewed as a single documentary.

 

[thribs]

The aliens really should have been made a bigger deal. That scene where Xavier said “they’re not mutants” should have been more impactful

 

[DonIago]

Is it worth a Blu ray purchase?

 

[Dick Whitman]

I guess that depends on your opinion off the movie itself. I watched the full doc and watched the film with audio commentary last night. Will probably watch film alone tonight.

Sometimes I am hesitant on buying movies at all. My library gets so much and how often do I really rewatch stuff?

But this was worth it to me. I really like this movie. Much better than expected features and completes my X-men collection.

Something the features show in detail I never would have noticed - Magneto’s island nation is build from sunken ship wrecks he pulled from bottom of the ocean.

 

[RPOW0614]

Saw this last night.
Was it great, no.
Was it the worst, no again.

I thought Last Stand was the worst of the bunch so far, but that is just my opinion.

The story was okay, the effects were great but the story never really got off the ground. The aliens were glossed over and the "heros" just kind of checked the boxes for their characters.

What really threw me off was the complete and total rewrite of Jeans history. Pretty much everything that was established in the previous movies was thrown out and this new story was created.

Sophie Turner was a bad choice for this movie, IMO. She isn't the greatest actress and it showed. I can only imagine that if they needed a red-headed actress Karen Gillan would have been a much better choice.

 

[Anwar]

For this kind of dramatic stuff, they'd have been better off casting Elle Fanning or Saoirse Ronan.

 

[Gaith]

Never mind all the quibbles about characters aging/not aging, or timeline vagaries, what I want to know is: what the hell was Mags doing ripping that subway train through the street?! What possible tactical purpose (at the cost of collateral injuries, and very possibly fatalities) was that intended to serve?!

 

[Kor]

I finally watched it now that it's on blu-ray, and I wish I had seen it in the theater.
The narrative felt like some stuff was missing. The aliens needed a little more explanation. But I liked the psychological focus and the fact that it wasn't overblown with too many characters. I like DP slightly better than Apocalypse. I give this a B- to B.

Kor

 

[F. King Daniel]

Never mind all the quibbles about characters aging/not aging, or timeline vagaries, what I want to know is: what the hell was Mags doing ripping that subway train through the street?! What possible tactical purpose (at the cost of collateral injuries, and very possibly fatalities) was that intended to serve?!

Non-Mutant casualties have always been the very least of his worries.

 

[Gaith]

Non-Mutant casualties have always been the very least of his worries.

Sure, but what was the point? If he just wanted metal to throw around they were surrounded by cars, which didn't require busting through several feet of concrete...

In any case, I agree with whoever on TV Tropes wrote this:

Informed Wrongness: Charles Xavier is portrayed as being in the wrong for hiding an Awful Truth from Jean Grey, yet it's clearly shown that her father didn't want anything to do with her after she accidentally got her mother killed, and he just wanted to protect her from being hurt even more. The movie also calls him out for trying to use the X-Men as a means to generate good PR for the entire Mutant species, but considering that they were being vivisected by the government merely 19 years prior, trying to make heroes out of his students is a logical course of action in a world where many of them are still hated and feared. Hank and Raven also quite bizarrely act like this is the only reason for Jean going bad, somehow forgetting about the evil alien force intensifying her emotions.​

Yes, when she reached an appropriate age, Charles should have told Jean her father was still alive. But, given that he wanted nothing to do with her, telling her both her parents had died as a child was probably the more merciful course of action, and under his watch, she became a heroic, happy young woman, so all the talk about how disgracefully he'd acted was weird.

...

MovieBob is annoyingly harsh toward the X-films, but he did nail the core problem with Dark Phoenix three years ago - namely, that by stripping out any subtext or hint of "bad girl" sexuality (no matter how problematic), there's really no point to doing this story at all. I definitely noticed while watching the movie that Jean's only moment of enjoying any kind of dark side was acting very mildly buzzed and asking for a third or fourth alcoholic drink. Scary! She's out of control! Hell, she didn't even jump Cyke's bones, even though it looked as though she was going to for a moment!

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

Meanwhile, the Honest Trailer crew recorded may be their funniest commentary yet, dunking repeatedly on the logic, continuity, basic storytelling, and general human emotion flubs all over the flick. It didn't even occur to me that Storm just let everyone get rained on! "Now the whole mansion will smell like wet Beast!"

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

 

[Anwar]

This ties into the bigger problem that the Dark Phoenix storyline was good for its time, but that time has passed.

 

[kirk55555]

This ties into the bigger problem that the Dark Phoenix storyline was good for its time, but that time has passed.

Except neither X-Men movie that tried has really adapted the Dark Phoenix storyline. Both take some elements from the comic, but ignore most of the story for random bullshit that the writer just shoves in there. I'm currently trying to get through Dark Phoenix now that its out on DVD (its a real "have to force yourself watch it 10-15 minutes at a time" movie), and just like X3 it barely resembles the actual story. It also barely uses Jean more then X3 did, which is pathetic, and in general its writing is very bad, probably worse then Apocalypse's writing. It might actually be worse then X3, since that film at least had Kelsey Grammer, Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan, and all of them were invested in their roles in a way that none of their counterparts were in this movie (although, as always, Jennifer Lawrence wins the award for "Most Obviously Sleepwalking Through Their Role").

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Then stop watching

 

[Anwar]

Except neither X-Men movie that tried has really adapted the Dark Phoenix storyline. Both take some elements from the comic, but ignore most of the story for random bullshit that the writer just shoves in there. I'm currently trying to get through Dark Phoenix now that its out on DVD (its a real "have to force yourself watch it 10-15 minutes at a time" movie), and just like X3 it barely resembles the actual story. It also barely uses Jean more then X3 did, which is pathetic, and in general its writing is very bad, probably worse then Apocalypse's writing. It might actually be worse then X3, since that film at least had Kelsey Grammer, Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan, and all of them were invested in their roles in a way that none of their counterparts were in this movie (although, as always, Jennifer Lawrence wins the award for "Most Obviously Sleepwalking Through Their Role").

See, to do Dark Phoenix right they'd have to make Jean be the useless "Girly Girl" of the team the way she was for over a decade in the prior movies and that wouldn't go over well with modern audiences. Plus all that stuff with her being brainwashed into becoming a pseudo-dominatrix by Mastermind and seeing the X-Men as Colonial Era people (and telling Ororo what a beautiful slave she was) would be pretty awkward on the screen too. It's damn weird reading that stuff from modern perspectives anyways.

That's why it may just NOT be worth it to try and do on screen,

 

[DonIago]

Does this take on DP do anything to explain how Jean is essentially "seduced" by the Phoenix Force (Anwar's comics-accurate version notwithstanding), or is it just "the more she uses her powers the worse things get for her", or...well, I guess what I'm asking is, what leads to the pivot point here, and is that at least well-written?

 

[Kor]

Does this take on DP do anything to explain how Jean is essentially "seduced" by the Phoenix Force (Anwar's comics-accurate version notwithstanding), or is it just "the more she uses her powers the worse things get for her", or...well, I guess what I'm asking is, what leads to the pivot point here, and is that at least well-written?

It's like having this thing inside her makes her lose control more, and it also breaks down whatever mental barriers Charles had put into her mind when she was younger for her protection (or something like that).

I wanted to see more of the massive destructive power that this thing was capable of, but I felt that what we got was somewhat anticlimactic.

Kor

 

[DonIago]

^That's disappointing to consider. :/

 

[Gaith]

This ties into the bigger problem that the Dark Phoenix storyline was good for its time, but that time has passed.

There are all kinds of ways for an uber-powerful superhero to turn Bad apart from the original comic sense of "dressing skimpily, and blowing up a planet." Jean could have gotten political, destabilizing governments and deposing leaders who got on her bad side or failed to live up to her standards, for instance. But wrecking three cop cars, and accidentally killing an X-woman don't carry nearly the dramatic heft the movie wants them to. She may be standing next to a woman instead of a man this time, but, as with The Last Stand, she mostly just stands there and looks constipated.