Essentially, Jean discovers that Charles has been
hiding some information from her about her
childhood and she gets angry (dangerously
so) and starts racking up a body count. Even
Magneto (Michael Fassbender), who is living in
what looks like a dystopian sleepaway camp,
doesn’t want any part of it and she becomes an
outcast. So when an intense alien with nefarious
plans and sky high stilettos, Vuk (Jessica Chastain)
tells her that she’s just misunderstood and to
follow her, Jean is all ears.
It’s a lot of fussy plot with not much heart behind
it, and while Turner is excellent at looking like a
woman in distress, she needs a character to back
up all that conflict and make us care. Even a pretty
shocking death barely registers emotionally. It
probably also doesn’t help that this is coming on
the heels of “Avengers: Endgame.”
As with the other X-Men movies featuring this
younger cast, the best parts are usually when
Magneto and Charles are in the same scene,
which we do get a bit of here in a pretty fun
action sequence on a train which introduced me
to the concept of “dreadlock fighting.”
But all in all, “Dark Phoenix” is a whiff. The most
suspenseful thing that happened had nothing
to do with the movie at all, but the theater’s fire
alarm that went off during a review screening
during the epic climax.
“Dark Phoenix,” a 20th Century Fox release, is
rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of
America for “intense sequences of sci-fi violence
and action including some gunplay, disturbing
images, and brief strong language.” Running time:
113 minutes. Two stars out of four.
MPAA Definition of PG-13: Parents strongly cautioned. Some material
may be inappropriate for children under 13.