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Heard it as a loose retread of Last Stand....which is less than a ringing endorsement.

That's sad to hear. With this being the last of the Fox X-men movies, I was hoping they would go out with a bang and not a whimper.

I was also hoping that the X-men could somehow be rolled into the MCU with the same actors/events. Could you imagine the kind of reaction fans would have if it turned out the all these movies coincided with the MCU timeline (in an alternate universe, of course) but were then merged somehow (maybe the second snap and/or the time shenanigans brought to 2 worlds together?) Heck, they could even do a reverse "No more mutants" with Scarlet Witch maybe trying to bring back Vision and accidentally merging with her "Mutant-verse" counterpart and bring all the mutants into the MCU

It's not like half of the X-men movie events haven't already been "wiped" from their own canon, so why not just lean into the skid.

But if this does poorly (looking likely) than I doubt Disney would want to keep up that particular franchise. It will be sad to see the X-men rebooted (again) with new actors and backgrounds.
Hopefully the MCU does not introduce mutants at all.

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Huh. Who would have thought a movie with Sophie Turner as the main character would bomb. I love X-Men, but after how they handled her in Apocalypse, I can’t say I expect this one to be any better. Phoenix is already done to death (pun intended) in the comics, doing a second movie about it and casting Sophie just...sigh. Makes me miss Halle Berry’s wooden acting as Storm in the first trilogy.

I'd bet there's too much potential money in the X-Men for it to be abandoned forever.

A good middle ground would be to hand them over to the MCU, but with the dictate that they be a separate X-Verse instead of part of the existing MCU. Why? Because as I said earlier, given their performance with the Avengers and the like, I'm more confident that the MCU crew will do the X-Men justice than... well, anyone else I can think of.

The MCU has never really been about continuity. Endgame is probably the big exception to that, but surprise continuity reveals haven't been a thing since Tony showed up at the end of Hulk. If they don't do the X-Men in their own universe (having just added a multiverse, so why not?) they're not going to make a story of their inclusion; they're just going to show up at some point and pretend they've always been there like the Ancient One defending NYC during Avengers. The movies genuinely don't waste time on this stuff as much as fans think they do.

As for the film itself, reviews I've read make it sound like a mess. Didn't ever see Apocalypse, probably won't see this one either.

 Frazzled wrote:
Reviews are out. They are uniformly giving it horrible reviews.

I am Jack's total lack of surprise. This looked like hot garbage right from the beginning.

 Galef wrote:
Could you imagine the kind of reaction fans would have if it turned out the all these movies coincided with the MCU timeline (in an alternate universe, of course) but were then merged somehow (maybe the second snap and/or the time shenanigans brought to 2 worlds together?)

Disgust? Confusion? The Fox X-Men universe has more holes in it than Swiss cheese. They never cared about continuity in any way, and trying to bring that into the MCU would have been a disaster.

 LunarSol wrote:
The MCU has never really been about continuity.

Huh?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
The MCU has never really been about continuity.

Huh?

I believe he meant continuity with the comics, and not within the MCU itself.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Galef wrote:
Could you imagine the kind of reaction fans would have if it turned out the all these movies coincided with the MCU timeline (in an alternate universe, of course) but were then merged somehow (maybe the second snap and/or the time shenanigans brought to 2 worlds together?)

Disgust? Confusion? The Fox X-Men universe has more holes in it than Swiss cheese. They never cared about continuity in any way, and trying to bring that into the MCU would have been a disaster.

In fairness, the X-Men movies ending up as a tangled continuity nightmare due to retcons, parallel universes and time travel seems entirely faithful to the comics.

I'm more interested in the Fantastic Four. There aren't really any fondly remembered F4 movies for an MCU redo to compete against, and they're a lot easier to work in than "civil rights movement out of nowhere".

 totalfailure wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
The MCU has never really been about continuity.

Huh?

I believe he meant continuity with the comics, and not within the MCU itself.

No, I mean within the MCU. There is, overall, very little in the story of any of the films (except Endgame) that's tied all that directly into any of the others. Any plot points that do are generally introduced in the film they matter later in a way that doesn't depend on any real prior knowledge of anything that came before. People keep expecting them to be "about" setting up continuity, but they generally are happy to passively reference things that comic fans care about but rarely make the plot about the kind of things like "why mutants" or anything like that. That's part of the reason the two films that probably spent the most time on setting up meta narrative (Iron Man 2 and Age of Ultron) are generally not as compelling as the rest.

It's also why Thanos really doesn't get any of the gems until Infinity War. There's not a single movie that explains "how he got the X gem" other than Infinity War. Its fun to know why a gem is where he ends up getting it, but its not really critical to the plot of the film in which it matters and that's pretty true of the entire franchise. The run up to Avengers was done in a way that it very easily could have been Red Skull as the villain as a clear audible. Very very little in the films are setting up future movies outside of the post credit scenes. They're "connected" but they're not about tying themselves together or explaining one another. Once they exist they'll just have always existed and I don't expect the mutants to require any sort of continuity wizardry and more than Black Panther, Dr. Strange, Hank Pym or any of the others did.


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 Elemental wrote:

I'm more interested in the Fantastic Four. There aren't really any fondly remembered F4 movies for an MCU redo to compete against, and they're a lot easier to work in than "civil rights movement out of nowhere".

They really seem like a trivial addition. 50's era family "Lost in Space"/the negative zone for over half a century makes it back to the modern day.... go.

The MCU films are written so that they don't rely on people having seen and remembered every second of all the other films to come before it.

But to say that the MCU isn't about or interested in continuity because they include redundancies of exposition in their films is a mighty, mighty stretch.

He's probably overstating it, but the MCU's continuity has been exaggerated by many. The flexibility they built in (compared to the early DCEU committing everything to one director's vision and a single storyline for instance) was one of the secrets to its success. They could adjust on the fly to what worked and didn't.

Ya know, they could always attribute the messed-up continuity of the X-men franchise to the time-shenanigans of the MCU if they decide to bring in that francise into the MCU. Again, probably involving Scarlet Witch "oppsying" them in.

But with the apparent/anticipated failure of Dark Phoenix, I doubt the MCU will have any desire to bring in Mcavoy, Fassbender & crew into their canon.
What's more likely is that mutants will slowly start showing up in the MCU piecemeal to "test the waters" before the X-men full-on make an appearance.

But hopefully they can successfully bring in the F4 long before then

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[quote=LunarSolNo, I mean within the MCU. There is, overall, very little in the story of any of the films (except Endgame) that's tied all that directly into any of the others. Any plot points that do are generally introduced in the film they matter later in a way that doesn't depend on any real prior knowledge of anything that came before.

And so the year of disapointment continues, 2019, the year of terrible endings.

 Formosa wrote:
And so the year of disapointment continues, 2019, the year of terrible endings.

Badlands had a pretty good series finale. Endgame was also a pretty sweet ending to the Infinity Stones story arc.

So has anyone here actually seen Dark Phoenix? Or are we all pretty much going “hell no, it’ll get a redbox rent if it’s lucky”?

Yea I went and saw it yesterday with some friends at our local cinema (only 4 quid a ticket :-p).

It was OK tbh. It had some cool scenes along with a clear and engaging story, if a little well worn as Jean Grey's character arc has been told plenty of times before.

I've just seen it and to be perfectly honest... It's far, far, far better than I expected.

Going into it, my expectations were in the toilet and, honestly, really I enjoyed it.

Don't get me wrong I'm not saying it's the best thing ever, there's things that could have done far, far better. However they got the themes right, the acting (assuming you like Sansa, which not everyone does, in which case you should probably give it a pass), enjoyable scenes and so on.

It's no Logan, Deadpools, DoFP or X2 but it's better than Origins, The Last Stand and Apocalypse.

I guess that leaves it as sorry of a mid range X-Men movie, how far along the middle range is probably up to the individual.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
So has anyone here actually seen Dark Phoenix? Or are we all pretty much going “hell no, it’ll get a redbox rent if it’s lucky”?

Unfortunately, my determination that the movie looks like hot garbage doesn't actually preclude me going to the theater and seeing it. There is still a 70% chance I will catch it because I really like the experience of going to the movies so it doesn't take much for me to justify a trip. I have not yet seen it, though.

I have not got round to it yet but if film critics are panning it- its probaly good.

I mean, good is a bit strong for it. I don't want to go around and getting peoples hopes up for it. The film is fine. It's not bad, it's not good, it's fine.

In my opinion, of course.

Been watching the X-Men movies since the first and looking forward to Dark Phoenix. Not amazing movies but always entertaining, and they have the best excuse of having many "super heros" in the same film.

Well, I’ve been an X-Men junkie since ‘92. My wife liked the X-Men movies better than all the Marvel stuff (except Black Panther, and we skipped Last Stand and Apocalypse). She has no interest in this one either. Honestly, if they cast anybody other than Sophie Turner, wed probably both be onboard. But the movie focusing solely on her, when we both dislike her as an actress...that’s like going on youtube to watch hours of funny cats licking themselves when you hate cats with a fiery passion. Or...something like that.

I will say that's fair, is your not a fan of Sophie Turner, then it's not the film for you.

Personally I thought she did good in it and enjoyed seeing her on screen but I realise she's not for everyone.

She showed better acting chops as Serious Sansa than Young Sansa.

To the point where I'm genuinely wondering if Young Sansa being so irksome was actually superb acting?

It could also be 'she herself was young, and young people do tend to get better at things they stick at for years'. So therefore, six of one and half a dozen of the other.

A nice article on why this movie became a cluster...
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/we-were-wrong-behind-dark-phoenix-foxs-dismal-x-men-franchise-finale-plans-1216859

I'm surprised at how much the Red Letter Media guys liked didn't hate liked this movie. It makes me think I'd probably enjoy it the same way I enjoyed Xmen Apocalypse. Sometimes it's nice to have a bit of schlock that shots for okay.

 Compel wrote:
I will say that's fair, is your not a fan of Sophie Turner, then it's not the film for you.

Personally I thought she did good in it and enjoyed seeing her on screen but I realise she's not for everyone.

Well whatever she does its not going to be as bad as Jessie Eisnberg as Lex Luthor.

 Mr Morden wrote:
Well whatever she does its not going to be as bad as Jessie Eisnberg as Lex Luthor.

You mean the Riddler? Cuz he was totally playing the Riddler in BvS. Or Tommy Lee Jones in Batman Forever. Someone should have told him he was playing Two Face, not a reimagining of Jack Nicolson's Joker.

Sophie Turner is no Famka Jansen, but at least she looks the part without having to have her hair died a fake red.
The biggest gripe I'm having with the movie (haven't seen it yet) is the time jumps. Going from the 60s to 70s for DoFP, was cool. Jumping a bit to the 80s for Apocalypse was ok.
But being in the 90s is FAR too close to the original X-Men movie. Fassbender & Mcavoy are great as young Magneto and Xavier, but physically only because Mckellen and Stewart were so much older in the original that the they younger actors could look like they "aged' into the older actors appearance.

There's little more that 5ish years between Dark Phoenix and X-Men, making the age differences between the actor far too noticeable.

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