Like an employee who has put his last two weeks notice in, X-Men: Dark Phoenix puts in a minimal effort to get the job done and already has one foot out of the door. It is unknown as to when the executives at Fox knew of the Disney buy out, but the movie feels as if it was known before production and they knew they had to produce a movie while they still had major actors under contract. While the original comic book was an epic event in Marvel’s history, the second adaptation to film fails to engage the audience in any meaningful way or produce anything new to an already well established franchise.

Dark Phoenix brings back all the familiar faces from the previous films and all give their usual performance. Where I feel they went wrong is in trying to further develop already established characters in a rushed manner. The acting from Sophie Turner, Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender, and
James McAvoy was just as good as their previous portrayals, however the storyline failed to utilize this by any means. With no original perspectives on how these characters react to a situation that has been told before, you find yourself almost bored waiting for something unexpected, and disappointed when you don’t receive it.

With the variation from its previous rendition mainly being a new enemy using a confused and powerful Jean Grey, you find yourself wondering why this story needed to be told again without a truly original perspective on it. Dark Phoenix seeks to use your love of iconic characters to carry you to the end without giving you any new action, powers, or anything else that would justify producing a remake of a previously filmed X-Men plot. With decades of stories to pull from that could of brought something new to the franchise, Dark Phoenix end caps Fox’s reboot of the X-men no better than they previously ended the original trilogy. The best feeling you get throughout the entire viewing is walking out knowing that the X-Men franchise is now in the hands of a studio that has vision and a proven history.