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 Galef wrote:

What about Logan? Seems like those events could be in either continuity. Anyone know which?
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Logan is a separate continuity.

 Vulcan wrote:
To be frank, something like Dark Phoenix needs to build over several episodes. Establish Jean and Scott's relationship, establish Mastermind as a villain, add the tension with Logan, Jean's sacrifice and rebirth as Phoenix, then bring in the Hellfire Club as a villain, Phoenix falling under Mastermind's control... and only then see Dark Phoenix unleashed. Bonus points if you'd already established the Shi'ar, done the M'Kronn crystal story and established the Charles/Liliandra relationship.

Yeah, Dark Phoenix was always more about the buildup, slow process where you saw how old Jean was gradually replaced by power-crazy Phoenix personality. It's not something easily done in one movie. At very least, one shouldn't try to do Dark Phoenix without Jason Wyngarde. It doesn't work if the process of seduction by power is not accompanied by literal seduction.

Overall, it was disappointing and rates as the worst movie of the 'new continuity'. It was a mess, though I credit that train fight scene was quite good.


If I had to write script outline for Dark Phoenix movie, I would have written it so that Mastermind seduces Jean to use her powers, only to end up being her first victim when she goes to deep end. Xavier tries to deal with the threat herself, fails and searches out Magneto and begs his help, to provide firepower and expertise so they at least have a shot against Phoenix. Finally Jean somehow realises/is convinced this is not what she is and sacrifices herself, or lets herself to be defeated, or escapes Earth or something. Roll credits, voilà.

Interviews say they were rewriting the script as they went along so your description is pretty accurate.

It's part of a larger trend where the big action sequences require months of practical photography and CGI so you have these scenes you must do (trip to space, fight in NY, train fight) but the scenes that connect them are almost after thoughts.

As for would have, should have, I don't think that in 2019 in these years of #metoo you can make a movie where Sophie Turner is seduced/raped by a creepy old dude.

The White Queen offering her real financial/political power to go with her mutant powers would be a good 3rd way. You can be humanity's lab dog with the X-Men, you can practice organic farming with Magneto or you can live in a mansion and rule these weak-minded fools as their black queen...

Throw in some lines about Jean being disillusioned before the space mission and you have a plot.

Honestly a plot like Dark Phoenix needs build up.

A crappy movie where Sophie Turner's Jean Gray makes her first appearance and is a bit player in the plot is not sufficient build up. The original comic story is so well remembered now because of what it meant to a long standing character and long standing relationships.

You don't just try and pull it off as a hail mary to save your garbage film franchise from mediocrity. It's the same mistake DC has continually made with the DCU. like a dime store bookshop.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Interviews say they were rewriting the script as they went along so your description is pretty accurate.

It's part of a larger trend where the big action sequences require months of practical photography and CGI so you have these scenes you must do (trip to space, fight in NY, train fight) but the scenes that connect them are almost after thoughts.

As for would have, should have, I don't think that in 2019 in these years of #metoo you can make a movie where Sophie Turner is seduced/raped by a creepy old dude.

Wyngarde was not creepy old dude (well, he was in actuality but did not appear like that), that's one reason why the trick worked, Jean genuinely found him attractive. Anyway, in the movie they could just cast some hot guy and forego whole 'fake appearence' angle.

In Turner's previous notable role, her character was forcibly married and then raped...

-72.6%

That's how much Dark Phoenix dropped from weekend 1 to weekend 2.

That's awful. That's shockingly bad.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
-72.6%

That's how much Dark Phoenix dropped from weekend 1 to weekend 2.

That's awful. That's shockingly bad.

That's definitely not a good note for a movie franchise to end on. Wonder how many years Marvel will take before they incorporate the next incarnation of X men into the MCU, just to get rid of the bad taste left by the more recent movies.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
As for would have, should have, I don't think that in 2019 in these years of #metoo you can make a movie where Sophie Turner is seduced/raped by a creepy old dude.

That's the trick. Mastermind was a mentalist of quite high power - not as high as Professor X or Phoenix, but stronger than Jean Grey was - and IMMENSE subtlety. His seduction of Phoenix was his masterwork. He was working on her for MONTHS, brushing her subconscious, infiltrating her dreams, and warping her internal perception so gradually she didn't realize anything was wrong until his plans were just a hair shy of fruition. Even then, I suspect she would have never broken free of him without the power unleashed when he tapped into her darker, more hedonistic side, that's how thoroughly he had infiltrated himself into her psyche.

Physically? He never did more than kiss her a few times. No physical seduction was shown, anyway (and Marvel had earlier made it perfectly clear in one scene that Scott and Jean DID have sex; a physical seduction could and should have been made equally clear). But in her dreams he had almost completely replaced Scott as her lover.

That's why you HAVE TO handle the Dark Phoenix story very carefully; why it rewards the slow buildup over numerous intervening plotlines. It takes that long to bring the story to it's climax if you really want to do it justice. Otherwise it's... well, the actress seduced/raped by a creepy old dude, and rather unbelievable. Even for a superhero story.

I watched this today.

You know what? I enjoyed it. It wasn't a great movie by any stretch but it was a perfectly serviceable movie. Not a great ending. Not an accurate adaptation, but a decent x men movie. It even had all their typical comic drama and bs.

7/10

I think I'm gonna wait to just buy this (I own all the other X-men, so have to complete the collection). But from what I am hearing, I'm not gonna waste the $$$ on 4 tickets (me, my wife and 2 boys).

Which is sad, because I love the movie experience.

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Backfire wrote:

In Turner's previous notable role, her character was forcibly married and then raped...

Which even in a show with incest, patricide, betrayal, torture, castration etc stood out among fans as a bit too far.


Besides it denies Phoenix agency, I always preferred the idea that Jean chooses to use her power rather than some villain drives her nuts.

Indeed.

Of all of GoT, that is the one and only scene I skip, as it’s just too much. Jaime’s rape of Cersei is likewise a bit too much, but less upsetting to me.

There are some things you need to show, and others where implication is enough. Those two scenes didn’t really add anything other than shock value.

I knew it was going to be bad.

But not this bad...

I think they should put the dark phoenix arc into a vault for another time, cause it seems more like a TV Series ARC, not a MOVIE Arc. You need substantial build up and you can't do that in a movie, not even a series.

They have failed to do Cyclops, and almost every character in all of these films feel like their comic book counterparts. The only three who do are Logan, Magneto, and Dr. X. But even then in this movie Magneto and Dr. X are afterthoughts.

God Bless Sophie, but she had very little to work with because of the script. She definitely needed more of an acting range for the part, but this should've taken more time and been several movies. Not just one. You don't do what Justice league do and bang all your buck in one film. You want to build up for the series before you go into the weird stuff and character drama.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:


There are some things you need to show, and others where implication is enough.

Definitely a difficult line to walk in entertainment.

I remember an episode of Battlestar Galactica( the remake ) where it was implied that the crew of the Pegasus had assaulted the Cylon-Android captive( portrayed by Tricia Helfer ), and that really was enough to go on. I think any further and I would have stopped watching the show altogether.

One good case example is that of Pulp Fiction and Deliverance. Very similar scenes, yet Pulp Fiction was a more comical experience where we the audience are thinking "Whats a gimp? Hang on...what? WTF is going on here? OOOOOOOOOHHHHH NOOOOOO! OH ****-OFF!", where we are laughing, protesting and squirming at the same time. But Deliverance's scene is certainly unwelcome and we begin to question the need for it. Yet...we let Tarantino off the hook for what is fundamentally the same scene.

Alien and The Thing present another fine line in what an audience finds acceptable. Both have very nasty scenes, but one pulls its punches hard and fast without giving the audience time to react and are over quickly, leaving the audience guessing. The other has very graphic attack scenes that drag on a bit and leave nothing to the imagination. One was accepted as a landmark horror film to be preserved, but the other was a commercial and critical failure where the audience was mostly not having a good time. At their foundation, both are very good movies, but one may have gone too far dispite the best intentions of the director(John Carpenter). He was asked to make a horror film and damn well delivered one! But the majority of the audience didn't agree somehow...

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

Backfire wrote:

In Turner's previous notable role, her character was forcibly married and then raped...

Which even in a show with incest, patricide, betrayal, torture, castration etc stood out among fans as a bit too far.


Besides it denies Phoenix agency, I always preferred the idea that Jean chooses to use her power rather than some villain drives her nuts.

Im gonna probably step on some toes but............Why cant we? This stuff happens in real life, people like the villain exist, heck, its not to far of a stretch to think what a bad person with mind powers would do.
Bad people that do this exist, people that are victims exist. Why not write stories involving it?

 hotsauceman1 wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

Backfire wrote:

In Turner's previous notable role, her character was forcibly married and then raped...

Which even in a show with incest, patricide, betrayal, torture, castration etc stood out among fans as a bit too far.


Besides it denies Phoenix agency, I always preferred the idea that Jean chooses to use her power rather than some villain drives her nuts.

Im gonna probably step on some toes but............Why cant we? This stuff happens in real life, people like the villain exist, heck, its not to far of a stretch to think what a bad person with mind powers would do.
Bad people that do this exist, people that are victims exist. Why not write stories involving it?

Because Dark Phoenix is not a documentary. People watch it to be entertained and not disgusted.

But in the end it's all water under the bridge since no one asked us before the film was made.

At least until 2029 when deep fake technology will be so good we can make our own damn Xmen movies with any actors we choose.

 Galef wrote:
Which is sad, because I love the movie experience.

I feel you. I go to a lot of movies I know are going to be bad just because I never really got to go to the movies as a kid, so love it now as an adult.

This was a bridge too far though.

Could'a seen this yesterday. Saw John Wick 3 instead.

The ticket would have been free regardless of which movie I'd seen, but I'd've still felt ripped off had I seen Dark Phoenix. I felt like I owed the theatre money after JW3.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

Besides it denies Phoenix agency, I always preferred the idea that Jean chooses to use her power rather than some villain drives her nuts.

Those things do not need to be mutually exclusive. In the comics it was made clear that Jean was very much enjoying her powers even before Mastermind showed up. Wyngarde simply pushed her over the edge, or maybe accelerated the process. See also Dark Willow storyline (which Whedon directly ripped off from X-Men), where Willow corrupted herself but act from villain really pushed her into dark side.

Of course in the course of single movie it is hard to do. They should have foreshadowed it a bit more in the previous one, that would have allowed them to go with more ambitious storyline here.

Personally, I would have gone with the D'bari not necessarily being a thing in the movie either.

I'm not entirely convinced how much an external threat was really needed compared with X-Men just doing normal X-Men things until the Phoenix goes Dark.


Instead, I would have gone with Jessica Chastain literally playing the Phoenix and have her almost as Jean's 'imaginary friend' that gets more extreme throughout the film.

Then the final face off would be Magneto officially forming the Mutant Brotherhood (and Mystique joining them), essentially taking the Shiar Imperium's role in the story.

Jean joins with Phoenix > Jean working with Phoenix. > Phoenix starts going dark, as it craves new sensations > Dark Phoenix beats the X-Men > A planet goes explodey > Jean rejects The Dark Phoenix > Xavier and Cyclops help suppress the Dark Phoenix > Magneto and Brotherhood decides this Isn't Good Enough > Battle > Jean feels the Phoenix starting to Rise again > Final Rejection of Jean and her sacrifice. > End


Looking at that though, that definitely goes back to there being enough arcs in there for 2 movies. Or at the very least, an Infinity war length one.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Besides it denies Phoenix agency, I always preferred the idea that Jean chooses to use her power rather than some villain drives her nuts.

Well... that's more or less what happened in the comics. It's possible that Phoenix would have gone that route eventually anyway, but Mastermind's influence on her most definitely was the trigger for her to go over the edge when she did.

Besides, in the end it was perfectly clear that Jean - Jean, not Scott, not Professor X, not the Imperial Guard, not the Shi'ar Empress, not even the Phoenix - made the final decision in her life. I would say that demonstrates Jean's agency far better than having Jean just decide to go completely psychotic one day for no particular reason.

Yeah, the Animated Series actually made this far more explicit than in the comic, if I remember right. I remember being far more impressed by Jean sacrificing herself on TV than when I read the comic for the first time.

No, it was pretty explicit in the comic that Jean was choosing to die. Possibly even more so than in the animated series, as Liliandra was not there to fire the weapon at her....

I think trying to get the details of this story right is generally just not the right way to go. Particularly in hindsight of all the retcons to it, its really easy to lose sight of what made the original story special. Space missions, cosmic entity, Shi'ar and all that just detract from the parts of the story that really hold up. Of course, part of the problem is just that the parts that hold up have had the Carrie/Willow/Akira/Firestarter/White Violin etc treatment so many times at this point that they're hard to pull off the same impact with.

Comic readers saw Jean as a character who would NEVER go bad while modern audiences see her character as one destined to. That really takes a lot of fangs out of the story as a whole, as every time the character is included in a new adaptation, you're seeing how they'll try to angle her into the Dark Phoenix role.

I do think the Mastermind aspect is probably the most important one that gets left out. I think its where you can reel in the overblown melodrama and build a more subtle tale of corruption. Jean needs to grow frustrated with the world around her and break when it extends to those closest to her. Build a story around the school, with schoolyard conflicts exacerbated by Mastermind altering how people perceive what happens. Have Jean use her powers to influence someone her way in a small way and let that little abuse scale up. Let everyone feel betrayed that Jean abused their trust and let Jean grow frustrated that everyone is mad when she was just trying to help.

That's the kind of thing that makes these stories work and even what made the original work. It's not about alien firebirds; its about someone with the power to control anyone feeling shackled by the uncooperative nature of other people. It's a template story, but if you want to adapt it you need to get to the root of it and do it better. Otherwise you're destined to come across as a cliche of your own making.

Backfire wrote:

Of course in the course of single movie it is hard to do. They should have foreshadowed it a bit more in the previous one, that would have allowed them to go with more ambitious storyline here.

Well, no, what they should have done is accepted that they already covered (badly, but still) the Dark Phoenix story arc, and not wasted a second movie doing the same story again when there are so many more interesting X-men story arcs they could have adapted instead.

I find myself agreeing with LunaSol. I never thought much of it, but maybe the reason Dark Phoenix stuff in adaptations has felt so lame so consistently is that it's just a one hit wonder. A one hit wonder that shadows the Jean Gray character such that it's impossible for it to ever have the same impact ever again.

[quote=LunarSol 764438 10480033 344c3eb3d4dd1164c97c6382c96f487e.jpgComic readers saw Jean as a character who would NEVER go bad while modern audiences see her character as one destined to. That really takes a lot of fangs out of the story as a whole, as every time the character is included in a new adaptation, you're seeing how they'll try to angle her into the Dark Phoenix role.

I mean if you want a great version of the Dark Phoenix Adapted into the TV Series just look at no further than Buffy the vampire slayer with Willow. Like it has an agency of a character entirely, and she is the most freakishly powerful person in that setting... Plus its a gradual fall of an escalation of bad decisions that leads to complete meltdown and a traumatic event that sets it off... Almost like how Jean Gray should go through a gradual fall and then the igniter or inciting incident that causes a flurry of terrible decisions at risk to the character.

My general feeling about this movie can be summarized as

Ugh Not Again.

Maybe... just maybe, she sends Dr. X. into a coma thus removing the "Why didn't Dr. X not just freeze her entirely? Cause he is the most powerful psychic on the planet." etc. Literally removing a major player. This could be done with the influences of the Mastermind. Influencing and pushing her into making what she think is the right decision. OR to give more agency to the character, she just makes a decision because she is afraid.


In terms of classic filmology, the best fall characters are the ones where it is over time throughout the movie, One word comes to mind... Rosebud.

It can be gripping, sad, emotional gut wrench. But that didn't happen here, instead, we got a half baked character with little emotional depth and character development from the previous movies. She has only been in one property in this series of films. We have no emotional connection and we really don't care about this jean gray. We don't even care about this team.

Nevermind that none of them are acting like... well responsible people. Where the main character should be Cyclops and Jean Gray. And that turbulent relationship or maybe the relationship is not going well or Cyclops isn't interested anymore, or maybe jean gray is off her rocker. Literally, anything to give us the emotional connection between these two other than "I like dis girl."

Make cyclops the budding leader just like the TV show or comics. these roles are already at odds with Magneto and Dr. Macavoy and its distracting because they shouldn't even be that major in the film. Their time was Days of Future Past and First Class.
Magneto and Dr. Macavoy have already had their emotional and impactful moments. They are and should be fully realized characters. Yet they keep pushing them back to square one like those things didn't happen. Then we get to this movie and we have all these new characters and they have had 0 development in any real capacity.

I agree with Lunar in that the role has to be built up and not this sudden 180-degree flip.

If anyone is on the fence about this movie

Literally, go to the theater next door and watch Toy Story 4. Or helk John Wick 3. Which probably have far better-developed story and characters. Do not waste your money on this movie, get it from the library when it is free. There is no point to waste a dime on it.

Overall 0 Cyclops Offbrand Cereals / 5 Cyclops Offbrand Cereals, not enough cereal jokes.

 Asherian Command wrote:
She has only been in one property in this series of films.

This is nothing to do with the narrative failure of this film. After all, it's not like Citizen Kane was the fourth part in a franchise, to borrow your comparison. If it was done properly, they could have done the whole story in one film, but they didn't.

They should have doubled down on this being the last in their Xmen arc, and have the dark phoenix succeed

self sacrifice is less and less appreciated in politics, the media and society in general so it would have fitted in perfectly

Give Jean the moment of decision, show her considering it and then have her accept her dark destiny and flap off into the void to do dark phoenix-y things

(and this is from somebody who liked the original comic arc, its just been done so many times they might as well do something different especially as a movie doesn't give the chance to slow build it like the comics)