Picoreview: Dark Phoenix

Picoreview: Dark Phoenix: not nearly as bad as I expected it to be.

Like X-Men before it, I left the theatre kinda going, “Well, that didn’t suck,” except with X-Men it was an expression of astonished joy and relief and with Dark Phoenix it only…didn’t suck. It was not a great X film. For my money, however, it was miles better than Last Stand, First Class, and Apocalypse, and probably better than both the first two Wolverine movies. That leaves it in the top 5 for me (unless you count Deadpool, which I’m not), which I’m fairly comfortable with.

It is not the fiery, blow-out finale one might hope for, but honestly it’s just a lot more solid than I expected. I happen to love Sophie Turner as Jean Grey, so if you don’t, your estimation of the film may be very different from mine, but to my genuine surprise…it didn’t suck. I wasn’t disappointed.

I mean. There are things I would have done differently. Some of them would have been contingent on, like, this not being the final Fox X-Men film. Others…would not be contingent on that. Some of them are things I’m really unhappy about. Some of them are the fact that it would have been better with a full three-part trilogy leading up to this so we could care more about the actors in these roles, but…IDK. I know “it wasn’t a travesty” isn’t the most glowing response I could give, but I expected one, and sometimes “it didn’t suck” is higher praise than it sounds like it could be. So…there’s me on the topic.