Obligatory disclaimer of this blog: real life sucks. As for
the ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ movie proper… it works. That is all there is to it.
Here is the fact – the previous ‘Phoenix’ movie version
worked too, and I actually liked it better than this one. People are already
talking about how even CGI of the 2019 movie was lackluster, and I have to
agree – the previous version, where Magneto even took a certain bridge flying
through the air, was better, especially given how CGI had improved from then
till now. By modern standards, especially after ‘Infinity War’, and ‘Endgame’,
and even ‘King of Monsters’, (which is a monster movie, and not a
Marvel-related one, but we are talking about CGI here in general), ‘Dark
Phoenix 2019’ is an underdog, in a bad way.
…Yes, if we are talking about Marvel, people are already
pointing out how the CM movie has undercut ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ in a bad way –
again. As the previous X-Men movie – ‘Apocalypse’ – showed, Jean Grey was
already the Phoenix, so what was with that space cloud shite? ‘Dark Phoenix
2019’ had been reworked from the very beginning, but it was better in the first
act, so the reworks were not so glaring.
Then again, we have the D’bari – the aliens of this movie. In
the Marvel comics, they were, well, alien plant people that hated humanity
after the Phoenix destroyed the sun to fuel her powers. They didn’t have any
shapeshifting powers, and though one of them – Vuk, who was a female in this
2019 movie and played by Jessica Chastain – became something of a villain known
as the Starhammer – they never became shapeshifters, ever. That was more of a
Skrull thing, I bet.
…Of course, movies have remade and restructured comic
elements, Marvel more so than DC, but on that note, unlike those movies, the
X-Men films were de-facto set in ‘our’ world, with just mutants added for extra
flavor – nothing more was necessary. Yes, the ‘Logan’ (Old Man Logan) film also
had cyborgs…but, apparently, it was set in a world apart from the other X-Men
movies – Earth 17315, while the rest of the films took place either on
Earth-10005, or on Earth-TRN414. Seriously, FOX’s take on the mutant world was
a mess, and that is before you factor in ‘the Gifted’, and ‘Legion’, and
anything else that FOX threw forth mutant-related. However – and that is the
point – it always was an ‘ordinary’ world, just with mutants in it. No aliens
or extradimensional elementals or what else have you required. Yes, ‘the Gifted’
ended with the show’s heroes following Blink somewhere, even though she was
dressed as some sort of an alien space princess – but ‘the Gifted’ got
cancelled before we could learn as to what was up with that, so that state of
affairs is nullified.
And now we have ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ that has outright aliens
in it and their alien-ness did not do anything to further the film. In the
trailers and clips, Jessica Chastain’s character looked more like a subdued
version of Emma Frost/the White Queen than an alien and she acted similar to
Emma Frost in the comics, too.
…It should be noted that there was already an Emma Frost in
the X-Men movies, but we are talking about the old Earth-10005 world, not this
TRN414 one, so there was no reason as to why her character could not have
gotten a reboot. In addition, this version of the White Queen was not really a
telepath – she could turn into living diamond, (something that the main basic
White Queen versions also can), but she never had any mental powers. There was
also an Emma in the ‘Wolverine Origins’ film, but it was a different Emma, a
Silverfox rather than Frost, sister to the movie version of the Silver Fox
character… Where were we? Oh yes, that Emma has also died in that movie, so
Earth-TRN414 was still decisively Emma Frost-free, so why not have her and the
rest of the Hellfire Club instead of aliens in ‘Dark Phoenix’? (As they were in
the comics and in the 1990s X-Men cartoon series)?
Well yes, the Hellfire Club seems to have some problems of
its own – mainly an identity crisis. These days, especially on TV, (whether
real life action series as ‘the Gifted’ or various cartoons), it is referred as
the Inner Circle club or something similar instead. That isn’t the problem, the
problem on ‘the Gifted’ was that the show was kind of understaffed, but they
still managed the best they could, and it was proportionally just as good a TV
series as ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ was a movie, so there!..
This, I suppose, brings, us to Mystique. No, it is not
regarding her comment about the X-Men being the ‘-Women’ instead, that just was
something of a SJW-fail in my opinion. The thing is that Mystique has never
really been an X-Man, and while sometimes she was a frenemy of theirs, as
Magneto was, other times she was an outright enemy, as when she worked for
Apocalypse, (as she did in the 1990s cartoon). When she became an X-Man in the ‘First
Class’ movie…it kind of left me rubbing my hand and wondering – ‘now why would
they do that’? If they needed a mutant shapeshifter, why not bring Morph – but we
digress.
The problem with ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ was that it was
re-written, that that re-write clearly was clumsily done, and that there were strong
traces of Disney/Marvel behind this re-write. (Something similar went down with
‘the Gifted’ in S2 also, but since the show is cancelled, it does not matter
anymore). The Earth-10005 movies were always very different from the Marvel
Cinematic Universe films, with a darker, less colorful, more Gothic feel to
them. The Earth-TRN414 films too were different, with various historical ‘flavorings’
to them, from the Caribbean Crisis onwards. The ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ film lacks
that element, especially in the second half of it. FOX wanted to make ‘Dark
Phoenix 2019’ different from the CM film? Then it certainly took a wrong
strategy, or went in the wrong direction, to do so!
What else to say? Real life sucks, as it was said in the disclaimer.
The ‘Dark Phoenix 2019’ film is slightly better than that, but only slightly.
The fact that it comes on the coattails of the latest Avengers films does not
help, but most of its problems are its’ own design, and sadly, it will likely
to be remembered as CM’s poorer cousin, unlike the previous Phoenix film,
which, at least, was its own movie. (Let us not even get started on the
agelessness of the characters – let us just assume that mutants do not age as
regular people do, and leave it at that).
…This is it for now, see you all soon!
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