X-Men: Dark Phoenix Review

X-Men: Dark Phoenix is a film which comes directed by Simon Kinberg. The film stars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Sophie Turner and Jessica Chastain.

X-Men: Dark Phoenix is a film which I’ve been quite excited to see. I’ve been a long time fan of the X-Men films and the franchise in general in the past. Of course, over the years, there’s been many of these X-Men films to go and see and some of them are great, while others are not so great. But with X-Men: Dark Phoenix seemingly being the last film in the franchise, I was very keen to see how it might all end.

To be honest with you all. Coming out of the cinema after seeing this, I was a little disappointed. The director of the film, Simon Kinberg, has never directed a feature film before! Looking at his IMDB, while he’s been a pretty great producer and I love his work, I don’t think a film of this scale is the best thing to start out with. While he did okay, considering it’s his first go making a movie. For the most part, X-Men: Dark Phoenix comes across a film which has been highly edited and sitting there watching it, it was quite a jarring experience.

There’s an article I found online not long after seeing X-Men: Dark Phoenix, which does explain the extent of the problems with this film, including the delays, the re-shoots and all the problems the director had before it released. You can find that article here on Screenrant. So in the end, it seems like behind the scenes the film was in quite a bit of trouble and I felt that for the most part when watching the film that it was quite a mess. It’s a shame really.

The plot of X-Men: Dark Phoenix is okay. Although I don’t want to go into specific details as I wouldn’t want to spoil anything for my readers, I must say, honestly, it’s full of plot holes. Characters are not developed properly. This is strange considering how many edits the film has had. The handling of the characterisation of the Professor Xavier character was something I had major issues with, but also the film struggles to really do much at all with Jean as well. The problem I felt, was that in the end of it, in this film, it does struggle to really find a central character for the audience to follow. For a while it’s Jean, then for a while it’s Xavier, then it doesn’t do much with either and in the end, goes nowhere with both.

As for the actors, I felt that they were all individually quite good. The film does give come with a solid cast of likeable actors which includes, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Sophie Turner and Jessica Chastain. They all did as best they could. But most of them were underused and many had little screen time. That’s sort of sad as they’ve been building these characters up for years and fans probably would want a little more.

The special effects are okay. Not much different to the X-Men films in the past, but they could have been better. Some of it looked a little low budget, especially the helicopters. Action scenes are okay. Towards the end, the film has its high point during a long drawn out train fight scene. But in the lead up to it, there’s nothing too memorable. It’s a bit average.

Overall, X-Men: Dark Phoenix is a film I would say you should only rush out and see for one reason. That reason is because you’ve watched all previous X-Men films leading up to this and you want to see how it all turns out in the end. But if you are just looking for an action film to see at the cinema this weekend and you’re a bit over the comic book genre at the cinema, then you would probably be better off going to see Godzilla: King Of The Monsters or John Wick 3 instead.

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