It was simply okay. Not great, Kinda Bad. I had a feeling once Matthew Vaughn left X-Men... It would go back to shyt. He seems to be the only one can gracefully adapt source material, modernize, and clean up script pretty well.
I thought Apocalypse was way worse than Phoenix for reason that it had no excuse for being that bad.Apocalypse was one of the few old X-Men stories with some easily adaptable source material. Apocalypse should of been a 2 part event like Thanos, but they really fukked it up and to be honest... They never should of ran back Dark Phoenix in this era. It was really stupid.
To be honest, Dark Pheonix source hasn't aged that well. It's really not that great outside of nostalgia. There is just soooo many logic bombs that ruin X-men IP( Not just Dark Pheonix) as a whole and makes it super difficult to write a film for an ensemble cast. You can't really give every X-Men character their own film and then do X-Men/Avengers type films outside of like maybe 3 characters. X-Men is an IP seems more fitted towards high production quality HBO TV series than Films. An average hollywood writer ain't gonna be able to run that shyt unless you have a Matthew Vaughn that can manage it like a logic mathematician that frames the story for it to succeed and cleans up the script. Granted... ALL of the old X-men stories really need great writers/minds to translate them properly to the big screen, anyways. You're gonna throw out about 95% of the material out, because it flat out sucks.Then, you have a hack writer that will supplement the missing material with just as bad or worse material. It's just a mess and this has been plaguing X-Men for so many films.
Another issue that I have with the film... is the current climate towards Women and empowerment. Fox, Disney, or anyone wasn't gonna approve of an OG Dark Phoenix. Because making a woman being an insane, dark antagonist in this sensitive climate isn't gonna get approved by Execs. Disney wouldn't have the balls to do that shyt. They would of done the Phoenix 5 storyline with male being lead antagonist. It's smarter and they should of done it. It's a better storyline and way less predictable since it's more of a spin-off of Avengers vs. X-Men. You wouldn't know what to expect, but it needed a real writers and mind to adapt it.
It got turned into a women empowerment film, because that was it's only avenue it has to be honest. I don't mind it. I actually enjoyed the women empowerment take and people getting upset over it... Should stop being such a dikk. It's a comic book movie of a poorly aged source material with hack writer turn hack director, Simon Kinberg. It was the only half way decent message this film made. It simply wasn't the right time to try to do the OG Dark Pheonix.
So, I personally can't feel vitriol for this film with it's nonexistence character development, terrible logic, and etc. It's DOA and common sense would of told you that before even buying a ticket.
It's seems poetic for Fox X-Men to rose up from ashes like a Phenoix after being killed by Brett Ratner & Simon Kinberg in the Last Stand to be later killed again by the same man in Apocalypse & Dark Pheonix. Goodbye FOX.
Long as Origins exists that's impossible
and the longer the movie went the more it lost steam.
