By the Time We Get Dark Phoenix

X-Men: Dark Phoenix (2019) is another shot at one of the great comics story lines. I know that most people consider this one a bomb, but that’s also the consensus about the last one (X-Men: Last Stand). And I liked that one. I wasn’t too impressed by Sophie Turner as Jean Grey in Apocalypse, and I really prefer Famke Janssen, but now I like her fine.

It starts with little Jean Grey causing a car accident with her psychic powers, killing or wounding her parents - hey, that’s Dr. Sivana’s origin story! So she goes to Prof. X’s School for Gifted Children. Now in the present (story set in the 90s, I believe), some astronauts are in trouble with a solar flare. So Prof. X sends a squad of X-Men up in the X-Plane to help out. As one of them says, “So we’re doing space now?” After Guardians, of course.

Jean Grey goes out to help, and winds up inside the solar flare, which stuffs her full of energy. She makes it back home ok, more powerful than ever. The students throw a party in the woods to celebrate and we get a few mutant cameos, including Dazzler - the disco mutant! But Jean loses control and blasts the party.

It seems that Prof. X blocked the memories of her part in the car crash, and now she’s going home to see her father - the father that wanted her out of his life because she killed his wife. So she starts throwing things around (including police cars). When the X-Men show up, she throws them around too, killing Raven. That escalated quickly.

Meanwhile, some shapeshifting aliens take over the bodies of Jessica Chastain and some other rich folk. They are after the cosmic force that Grey absorbed, so they are involved in the plot, but somehow feel like they are extraneous.

I like the Dark Phoenix story because of it’s heightened, operatic emotions, and also the idea of a powerful woman losing control and becoming deadly. I thought Turner handled that, although maybe it isn’t a difficult role. I also sympathize with the men who love Jean Grey, but here that’s pretty much Cyclops, played by Tye Sheridan, a complete nobody. I’ve said it before, this is a tough role - Scott Summers is supposed to be a leader of the X-Men, a bad boy on a motorcycle, but also a whiny indecisive nerd. Like the coolest kid at math camp. So they didn’t really write much for him in this movie.

Raven and Beast do better, the most senior X-Men in this timeline. They both think Prof. X is failing to protect his students by sending them on dangerous missions. MacAvoy’s Professor gets to be a bit more of a jerk here (and also gets his bald head). Magneto (Fassbender), on the other hand, is pretty much a hero here, although he gets pretty upset when he hears about Raven/Mystique.

In conclusion, I really liked this movie, but I might concede that it is not good. And I managed to get through this whole thing without calling the star Sophie Tucker.