20th Century Studios
DARK PHOENIX
Starring James McAvoy (Charles Xavier / Professor X), Michael Fassbender Erik Lensherr / Magneto), Jennifer Lawrence (Raven / Mystique), Nicholas Hoult (Hank McCoy / Beast), Evan Peters (Peter Maximoff / Quicksilver), Sophie Turner (Jean Grey), Tye Sheridan (Scott Summers / Cyclops), Kodi Smitt-McPhee (Kurt Wagner / Nightcrawler), Alexandra Ship (Ororo Munroe / Storm), and Jessica Chastain (Vuk)
Directed by Simon Kinberg
Produced by Simon Kinberg, Hutch Parker, Todd Hallowell, and Lauren Shuler Donner
Written by Simon Kinberg
Music By Hans Zimmer
Distributed by 20th Century Fox via The Walt Disney Company
Run Time: 1 hour and 44 minutes
World Premier: June 4, 2019, Hollywood, California
Opening Weekend Box Office: $32 million
Worldwide Box Office: $252 million
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 22%
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Fun Dark Phoenix Facts
Dark Phoenix is a re-imagining of similar events seen in 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand, chronicling Jean Grey’s transformation into the Phoenix. Both films are (quite loosely) based on The Dark Phoenix Saga written by Chris Claremont (who has a cameo in the Dark Phoenix film) and John Byrne (also illustrated by Byrne), which was published in the pages of The Uncanny X-Men #129-138 in 1980. X-Men: The Last Stand was produced in conjunction with Marvel Studios, though the Marvel Studios team were at the time, distracted with their independent movie-making venture that would lead to the birth of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. X-Men: The Last Stand was the final X-Men film produced by Fox with involvement from Marvel Studios, and the film was not well received by fans nor critics. Dark Phoenix was Fox’s attempt to get the beloved “Phoenix” storyline right. Dark Phoenix filmed from June of 2017 through October of 2017, and was originally slated for a November 2, 2018, theatrical release.
After directing X-Men and X2: X-Men United, Bryan Singer decided against directing X-Men: The Last Stand in favor of directing Superman Returns for Warner Brothers. Singer returned to the X-Men franchise in a directing role in 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past then followed that up with 2016’s X-Men: Apocalypse. Legal troubles ultimately resulted in Singer missing out on an adaptation of The Dark Phoenix Saga yet again. Simon Kinberg (who co-wrote X-Men: The Last Stand) replaced Singer as director.
Dark Phoenix is set in the 1990’s, continuing the tradition that began in 2011’s X-Men: First Class of subsequent X-Men films taking place in different decades. First Class was set in the 1960’s, Days of Future Past was set in the 1970’s, and Apocalypse was set in the 1980’s. The Fox X-Men film Universe is more than a little complicated, but in making sense of things as best I can, I assume that mutants generally age differently (slower) than normal humans, which is how so many of these characters look so young thirty years removed from their introductions in X-Men: First Class, which was set during the 1960’s.
Dark Phoenix was reportedly going to be a two-part story initially, but this was changed during the developmental process. Several characters were scrapped from the film and the entire ending was changed, if reports are to be believed. Jessica Chastain is said to have initially been cast as an entirely different character.
Laura Shuler Donner served as a Producer on all eleven Fox X-Men films from 2000-2018. Though she was credited as a producer on Dark Phoenix, this was only due to her contract. She actually took no part in the development of this film.
In the Summer of 2017, Fox confirmed that James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, and Jennifer Lawrence had all signed new contracts and would appear in Dark Phoenix in a reprisal of their respective roles as Professor X, Magneto, and Mystique. Their original contracts ended with X-Men: Apocalypse
Connected Theater
On December 17, 2017, The Walt Disney Company announced that it had agreed on a deal with 20th Century Fox that would see Disney acquire Fox’s television and film divisions, among other things. The historic deal was for a reported $54 billion and promised to bring Deadpool, The X-Men, and The Fantastic Four into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
In the Spring of 2018, Fox announced that Dark Phoenix would be delayed from its originally announced theatrical release date. The new release date was announced as February 14, 2019. However, Dark Phoenix would be delayed once again in the Fall of 2018, given a new release date of June 7, 2019.
On July 27, 2018, Fox shareholders unanimously approved Disney’s acquisition, and the deal was finalized on March 20, 2019. Disney CEO Bob Iger confirmed that films that had already been made by Fox (such as Dark Phoenix) would still receive theatrical releases.
Dark Phoenix was one of four Marvel films that were produced in 2019, but Dark Phoenix was made without any input from Marvel Studios, despite the announcement of the Fox deal at the end of 2017. Marvel Studios produced Captain Marvel, Avengers: Endgame, and Spider-Man: Far From Home (with Sony) in 2019. All three of the Marvel Studios films outperformed Dark Phoenix. Avengers: Endgame ($2.7 billion) was the highest-grossing film of the year (and temporarily the highest-grossing film of all-time), Spider-Man: Far From Home ($1.1 billion) was the fourth highest-grossing film of the year, and Captain Marvel ($1.1 billion) was the fifth highest-grossing film of the year. Dark Phoenix ($252 million) meanwhile was the lowest-grossing X-Men film of all-time as well as the worst-received X-Men film of all-time, critically speaking.
In 2021’s WandaVision series produced by Marvel Studios for Disney+, Evan Peters was cast by Marvel Studios to seemingly portray Quicksilver within the traditional MCU, complete with the power set and name of Marvel Studios’ version of Pietro Maximoff that was previously portrayed by Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Peters as Pietro looks as he did in Fox’s X-Men films and shares several scenes with his “sister” Wanda (portrayed by Elizabeth Olsen), and furthermore retains the same sort of charisma and comedic timing that made him so likable as the character in Fox’s X-Men films. At the time, many fans thought that Marvel Studios’ casting of Peters was to be MCU fans’ formal introduction to the Multiverse and that this version of Quicksilver was in fact the same version of the character that was introduced in X-Men: Days of Future Past and that was featured in Dark Phoenix, but the series went on to reveal that the character that Peters was portraying had merely been brainwashed by an ancient Witch named Agatha Harkness, who bestowed his identity and accompanyting abilities upon him through magic. The character Peters was actually portraying was a resident of Westview, New Jersey (a whole town that had fallen under Wanda’s spell) named Ralph Bonner.
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My Dark Phoenix Review
I really don’t have a lot to say about this one, guys. I think it should be remembered that Simon Kinberg intended for this to be a two-part story that would have exceeded four hours. Making right by X-Men: The Last Stand had been a longstanding obsession for Kinberg, and he really did believe that his vision for this film in its original form would have done that. Instead, he had to cram a four hour-plus story into less than 2-hours. And the result was what you would expect it to be: an incohesive narrative and a largely unsatisfying film. What you might not have expected however, was how boring Dark Phoenix was. With less than 2-hours to do what it’s supposed to do, Dark Phoenix FEELS four hours long! This is a slow moving, poorly paced, moody motion picture.
I’m not going to get too much into the plot in this review. The first act establishes The X-Men as a celebrity superhero team that the public adores. The middle act sees the public turn their backs against the mutants due to the exploits of Jean, who becomes possessed by The Phoenix Force during a mission to Space to save a group of astronauts. The middle act slugs along, peaking with Jean killing Mystique and then slumping with everyone blaming each other while Jean hooks up with a D’Bari alien named Vuk, who wishes to extract The Phoenix Force from Jean.
The Vuk character was completely boring and uninteresting, and she dragged down every scene that she was in while the D’Bari race served little purpose other than to give The X-Men a common enemy to fight against during the third act of the film. And to be fair, the third act was just fine for me. We get to see Magneto and Charles work together again and we get to see Jean finally master her use of The Phoenix Force. Those things were great!
In fact, Sophie Turner delivered a great performance in my opinion, as did most of the usual heavy hitters: McAvoy (though I was not a fan of some of the things they did with Xavier in this film), Fassbender, and Evan Peters as Quicksilver. Jean’s sacrifice in the end worked and the end-of-film chess match between Charles and Erik was a perfect final sequence to end on. I will really miss watching McAvoy and Fassbender as those characters. Sadly though, none of the positives were enough to outweigh the negatives.
That’s really all I have to say about this film. I did not see it in the theater, choosing instead to just pick it up on Blu-ray when it came out, but after watching it the one time, I don’t really have any interest in watching it again. It just wasn’t very good, and it was a sad end to the Fox era of these characters, which did have some truly great productions over the years. This film was said to have lost Disney millions of dollars during the quarter in which it was released and most of those who did see it, felt the same way coming out of it: it was time to move on; time to do something different; time for Marvel Studios to do something new with these iconic comic book characters.
Still, I have a great appreciation for many of these films. X-Men: First Class, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Logan, Deadpool and Deadpool 2 are amongst my favorite comic book movies of all-time, and I still think X2: X-Men United holds up to this day as a great film. There were definitely some highs, but there were some dreadful low’s as well, and Dark Phoenix was the lowest in just about every measurable category.
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Highlights of X-Men: Dark Phoenix:
Sophie Turner as Jean Grey / Phoenix
Evan Peters as Quicksilver
James McAvoy as Charles Xavier / Professor X
Michael Fassbender as Erik Lensherr / Magneto
Death of Mystique and fallout (Most Emotional Sequences of the Film)
Dazzler!
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Notable MCU Concepts and Characters Introduced:
Dark Phoenix serves as a sequel to X-Men: First Class, X-Men: Days of Future Past, and X-Men: Apocalypse, films that feature various versions of a Universe of characters that are rumored to be set to be formally introduced in Marvel Studios’ upcoming film Deadpool 3. Dark Phoenix furthers the story of Charles Xavier / Professor X (portrayed by both Patrick Stewart and James McAvoy in the X-Men films), a Multiversal Variant of which (existing on Earth-838) was later seen in the 2022 Marvel Studios film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness that looks nearly identical to the version of Professor X portrayed by Stewart, with the Multiverse of Madness version of Xavier also being portrayed by Patrick Stewart.
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