The upcoming X-Men: Dark Phoenix is likely to be the final film in the Fox-produced series. Not only because the character rights are being transferred to Marvel Studios, but also because it’s apparently really, really bad. Awful. Terrible. Fantastic Four terrible.
You read that right. According to DisInsider’s Skyler Shuler, this movie is scraping up the toxic sludge that the 2015 mega-flop left at the bottom of the barrel. As he said on Twitter:
“Based on what I have heard, this movie cold be Fant4stic level BAD.”
Based on what i have heard, this movie cold be Fant4stic level BAD. https://t.co/L9P4u2Hasg
— Skyler Shuler (@Skylerhxc) January 2, 2019
Ouch. That’s impressively awful. As you probably remember (unless you blocked out the traumatic memory), that movie sucked out loud. It had decent actors, but they were terribly miscast. And director Josh Trank night be capable of making a decent movie, but thanks to massive studio interference, we’ll never know.
Dark Phoenix has been plagued by similar problems, including delayed release dates, extensive reshoots, and tons of negative buzz. Some of the cast is solid, but some are pretty terrible. And fans don’t want to be disappointed again, since the Phoenix saga has already been done very badly on screen once (in 2006’s The Last Stand).
That film was the third mediocre outing in a series that has now had six installments, not including Wolverine’s solo movies. They’ve been so consistently bad that X2 and Days of Future Past earned high praise just for sucking less than usual.
All this begs the question: Why is it so hard to make a great X-Men film? There are dozens of fascinating, well-developed characters to work with. A plethora of interesting storylines to choose from. A good many talented actors and directors on board. So why have the movies all been so……….meh? Is Fox the problem? If so, why was the first Deadpool so good?
In my opinion, the answer to that is twofold: hiring the right people, and then butting out. “The right people” are the ones who aren’t going to screw with the source material until it’s unrecognizable. They’ll understand that people want to see the heroes and stories they love, not “reimagined” BS that’s only loosely inspired by them. Then there’s the butting out. Fox suits were wise enough to bugger off and let Ryan Reynolds do his thing. And just look how well that turned out. However, they don’t seem to have learned anything from that success. Their constant interference has turned two decades’ worth of films into a dumpster fire that is massively unworthy of the X-Men name.
So get ready to see Phoenix get screwed up even worse than last time. Or better yet, join me in pretending this isn’t happening, and watching the excellent adaptation from the 90’s animated series instead.
Do you plan to see the movie when it hits theaters in June? Or has all the negative press turned you off of it? Tell us what you think below!