Spoilers throughout
With Dark Phoenix I find myself torn because I am not sure how much of my dislike of the film was it being bad, and how much of my dislike is how close it came to being better.
I'll quickly skim through the bits I liked - Kurt being the loveliest (even if Kodi McPhee's accent continues to be made of LOL), Genosha not starting in (hell)fire and the film getting me to shout at Charles the way it wanted me to (even if I don't actually believe in the film's solution to the problem, mostly because Hank does not have the personality to be a headmaster and no-one else is alive or around).
The largest part of the problem was the film spent so long on action scenes that went nowhere that there was no time for character bits. Now that was fine for Xavier and Magneto where we know them well enough, but it's a problem for the characters, or versions of these characters, that we've barely met like this Scott Summers and this Jean Grey.
Jean is the one who suffers the most from this overweighting of action over character. Sophie Turner does amazingly well with nothing, Jean's dialogue being the same three lines on repeat all the way through.
I'd accepted that one of my bluesome twosome was not going to make it out alive, and was just happy it wasn't both of them. Hank suffers a lot from having nothing to do, with a lot of the rage reaction he ought to have being given to Magneto instead. I'm not sure if that's because it's more expensive to pay for the blue furry special effects than Michael Fassbender's wages or what, but it was annoying.
The other person who got to have manpain over the suffering of the female characters rather than be useful is Scott. Now I am miffed because they have finally made a film where Scott gets something to do … and they have given the role to someone with the range of a wooden spoon. The one poor choice the X-Men casting directors have made over 10 films really broke part of the heart of this film. I didn't believe in anything Scott was going through.
But the worst thing about the film is that they finally had a perfect Emma Frost and they made her a space alien for no good reason. I don't even like Emma Frost but Jessica Chastain in the scene they used in the trailer was perfect, all slinky evil and seducing Jean to the darkside; the White Queen of the Hellfire Club writ cinema screen large. Oh, how I would have love the film that scene was from. But no, we got random alien Emma instead.
And that's the point, if they'd wanted aliens there is a Phoenix Force plus aliens story. It's called the Dark Phoenix story - you know the comics arc this film is named for. It's a fantastic story, with aliens, but no Emma Frost. Just make Jessica Chastain Deathbird and have her be the power-mad dictator instead of D'Ken. Or do the Hellfire Club story properly. Do not mix and match and end up with sludge!
(Like I said, I would be happier with this if that one scene hadn't given me perfect Hellfire Club Frostie)
Overall, that’s why the film doesn’t work. It tries to be all things to everyone and ends up missing important things about all of the characters.
No comments:
Post a Comment