“X-Men: Dark Phoenix” worst installment in entire franchise

Erik Jimenez/Staff Writer

It’s a bummer to say that despite running for twice as long as the MCU, the “X-Men” franchise not only has about half of the amount of films under its belt, but about a good half of them are pretty mediocre to just downright awful.

 And with the film unwillingly becoming the final installment in the X-Men franchise, due to film studio 20th Century Fox being bought out by Disney during post-production, there are many hopes that “Dark Phoenix” could be a decent send off to this franchise and be a solid closing chapter for the handful of characters we have been following for the last few entries.

Alas life is cruel. Not only is “Dark Phoenix” an anticlimactic and disappointing dud of a film, it’s arguably the worst film this franchise has ever seen.

The film takes place in 1992, though you wouldn’t know that if the timestamp at the start of the picture didn’t tell you so. It’s been about 10 years since the X-Men saved the world from the villain Apocalypse and now they are beloved by the public. Even the president has a phone to personally call in Professor Xavier (James McAvoy) whenever he needs the X-Men to go on dangerous missions. During said mission, one member, the telekinetic Jean Grey (Sophie Turner), somehow absorbs the solar flare in her body resulting in her psychic powers being greatly amplified.

This results in her starting to lose control of her powers causing people around her to get hurt and breaking through mental blocks Xavier placed on her as a child. The blocks revealed secrets of her past she never knew about,  which lead to her having emotional breakdowns from those revelations and hurting more people. The government and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) are after her because they believe she is a danger to the world after she kills two important people,causing the latter to defect to Magneto’s side and creating conflict between the X-Men and Magneto’s brotherhood.  Yes dear reader, this overly long explanation is as boring to read as it is to watch in the film.

Oh, and there are shape-shifting aliens lead by Jessica Chastain that are a replica of the Skrulls from “Captain Marvel” in all but name, and they want Jean Grey’s powers to destroy the Earth. Because this movie didn’t have enough story for its under two-hour runtime.

And first-time director Simon Kinberg manages to make it the most boring film in the franchise. There is no energy anywhere, from the action scenes to the performances to the story. Kinberg wrote the script to this film and has written and produced previous installments in this franchise, including the infamous “X-Men: The Last Stand” which botched up this Dark Phoenix storyline so bad that you think Kinberg would learn from his mistakes, but he somehow makes an even worse version of that film.

The only real positive there is, is the score by Hans Zimmer despite it not fitting the film at all. Basically, it sounds like it belongs in a Christopher Nolan picture than an X-Men film. Not bad, but clearly misplaced.

What can I say? All of the highly reported reshoots and delays for this picture shows in the final product. They truly have saved the worst for last.