Dark Phoenix arrives as the fourth and final installment of the X-Men prequel films, a sequel to X-Men: Apocalypse and the twelfth entry in the wider series. Simon Kinberg writes and directs. The tagline promises “A Phoenix will rise. The X-Men will fall.” Only one of those things happens, and it is not the second.
Trailer, via 20th Century Studios.
Jean Grey and the Cosmic Force
The film opens in 1975, when eight-year-old Jean Grey is orphaned in a car crash as her telekinetic powers manifest. Charles Xavier brings her to his School for Gifted Youngsters. By 1992, during the Space Shuttle Endeavour’s first mission, the shuttle is damaged by solar flare-like energy. The president calls on the X-Men to save the astronauts.
Jean is struck by the energy. Her psychic powers amplify, but they grow harder to control as her emotional state deteriorates. Xavier admits he suppressed her memory of causing the crash to keep the trauma from making her unstable. Her enhanced power is destroying the mental blocks. She is experiencing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
That premise is the film’s best idea. A superhero story about a young woman whose mind is being taken apart from the inside, and the father figure who did the taking, should cut. Dark Phoenix knows this. It rarely manages it.
Sophie Turner and the Weight of the Phoenix
Sophie Turner plays Jean Grey. The Phoenix entity is unleashed in her, and she grows more unstable as her two personalities pull against each other. Turner carries the film’s few real moments. She is asked to hold a character who is scared of her own telepathic and telekinetic powers, and she does, even when the script gives her nowhere to put them.
James McAvoy’s Xavier is the film’s actual subject. Kinberg felt the character always acts out of concern for the “greater good,” though he may make some “misguided” choices. That is the movie worth making. Xavier’s lie is the wound. The film keeps reaching for it and then pulling back to the alien plot.
A Phoenix will rise. The X-Men will fall.
Genosha and the Alien Threat
Jean flees to Genosha, a mutant refuge run by Michael Fassbender’s Erik Lehnsherr. Kinberg compared the island to Israel, a homeland where mutants can feel safe. Military helicopters arrive demanding Jean’s surrender. She attacks them. Lehnsherr banishes her.
Jessica Chastain’s Vuk leads a shape-shifting alien race whose planet the cosmic force wiped out. Vuk wants Jean’s abilities. The film wants a villain. Chastain is given almost nothing to play, and the aliens never become a threat so much as a schedule.
Jennifer Lawrence returns as Raven Darkholme, Mystique, whom Lawrence described as more maternal here as she leads the younger X-Men. Kinberg hoped the growing schism between Mystique and Xavier would be more subtle than in previous X-Men films. It is not subtle. Raven dies in a telekinetic episode, and the film treats her death as a plot turn rather than a loss.
What the Ending Cannot Fix
The cast is deep: Nicholas Hoult as Hank McCoy, Tye Sheridan as Scott Summers, Alexandra Shipp as Ororo Munroe, Evan Peters as Peter Maximoff, Kodi Smit-McPhee as Kurt Wagner. Peters’ Quicksilver is injured in a skirmish at Jean’s hometown. That is the film’s one clean action beat, and it is over before it lands.
This is the first main X-Men film without Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, and the last produced by Bad Hat Harry Productions, uncredited after sexual assault allegations against Bryan Singer in 2019. Those facts sit outside the frame. They also mark an ending the film never earns.
Kinberg expressed interest in a more faithful take on Chris Claremont and John Byrne’s “The Dark Phoenix Saga” than X-Men: The Last Stand. That intent is visible. The execution is not. The film has the saga’s pieces — the shuttle, the force, the father, the alien — and no idea how to make them press on each other.
Why the Pieces Do Not Add Up
Dark Phoenix runs 114 minutes. It feels like two films cut into one, and neither survives. The cosmic plot and the family plot compete for the same scenes, so Jean’s breakdown happens in the gaps.
The strongest material is the smallest: Xavier’s confession, Jean’s memory of the crash, her realization that she killed her mother. That is a movie about a girl and the man who lied to protect her. It is buried under a war for the galaxy that the film cannot make anyone care about.
Kinberg hoped each character would come across as having “a valid point of view.” Some do. Xavier’s is the only one the film fully believes in, and it still lets him off.
Dark Phoenix is not a disaster. It is a waste — of Turner, of McAvoy, of a story that has now been adapted badly twice. The X-Men end their prequel run not with a fall but with a shrug.
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