150 Word Review: 'Dark Phoenix' (2019)
Burn, baby, burn
X-Men: Dark Phoenix, Fox’s final X-Men movie, is the worst X-Men movie, save for X-Men: Apocalypse and X-Men: The Last Stand. They’re all muddled spectacles, give or take a few well-conceived action scenes. Here’s hoping the MCU can rescue Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s classic comic book about superpowered misfits.
Everyone in Dark Phoenix is either bored or boring. Jennifer Lawrence? Bored. Sophie Turner as telekinetic Jean Grey? Boring. Nicholas Hoult? Bored. Tye Sheridan? Boring. James McAvoy? Bored. Even Nightcrawler is ho-hum. Jessica Chastain (huh?) plays a boring alien and looks bored doing it. But at least there’s Michael Fassbender’s Magneto. Ian McKellen’s version was a sinister diva, a lot of fun, but Fassbender plays the tortured mutant with maximum angst and swagger. His hand acting is so good, you actually believe magnetic energy flows from his fingers. The plot is boring, too: poor Jean Grey, but poor everyone watching.