“Dark Phoenix”

One of my father’s day traditions is to go to the movies with my family and this year we saw Dark Phoenix, the latest X-Men film. We’ve seen all the other films in this dying franchise, so why stop now? This installment focuses on Jean Grey’s (Sophie Turner) character who get’s caught up in some space accident while on a rescue mission which causes her mutant abilities to get enhanced and uncontrollable. She more or less goes to the dark side after that with a little help from an evil alien witch played by Jessica Chastain in a long blonde wig. I’m not quite sure why they made this movie. It’s not exactly anything that moves the X-Man mythology forward or is all that interesting. They tried something similar in the underwhelming X-Men: Last Stand as well, and until this movie was probably the least interesting of all the entries. Watching this, I felt a little bored and so did the actors. I got the feeling that some of them such as Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender & James McAvoy were just cashing paychecks. JLaw especially. She had very little to do in this and checks out about 45 minutes in. The movie’s last reel and final battle perks the movie up and almost makes it worth sitting through, but leaving this I still felt like scratching my head and saying what was the point of this story.

Rating (**)