#rewatched one of my fav movies ever… gah..

[mittsushi]

‘What’s it going to be then, eh?’

[auldcine]

♫ Frank Sinatra in Anchors Aweigh (1945)

[fizzingwizard]

I finally saw Dark Phoenix! Basically I didn’t like it. It met expectations, but my expectations were quite low, so that’s why. I’m sure I’ll rent it someday, but no way is it what I want from an X-men movie. It’s so depressing. How it out-depressed Last Stand, I don’t even know. Also Idk how there was praise for it in the Nightcrawler tag, I swear y’all watched a different movie than me.

spoilers i guess

And that’s sad because actually, up until Mystique died, I was enjoying the story more than I thought I would. The space scene was quite fun. Quicksilver and Nightcrawler’s tag team rescue was cool. The “Who needs phasers when you’ve got Cyclops?” bit was fun too. That scene felt really X-men-like except that Mystique was there of course.

Then they got back and there were accolades, and Xavier was doing something Shifty. That was all good. The party scene. Dazzler. I liked all that. Jean discovering the truth about her family, her emotional reunion with her father, her feelings of betrayal... Then Mystique died, and that’s when I knew there was going to be no more fun. The scene between Beast and Xavier in the kitchen was really well done, I thought, and I loved loved loved Sophie Turner’s Jean. She was a far cry from Apocalypse!Jean. A much more developed, believable character. Sophie Turner did a way better job acting that role than that movie deserves. Once they involved Magneto everything went to hell (not specifically Magneto’s fault, just that’s when the movie stopped being enjoyable for me).

But even if the movie had just been bad, all I really need to be happy is a few good Nightcrawler moments. Apocalypse isn’t a great movie, but it has a few fun Kurt things, so I do rewatch it from time to time. In DP, he had barely any lines. I started counting them at one point. His total number of individual words is probably under 20 in the whole movie. And he doesn’t seem to have grown or changed at all since Apocalypse, even though apparently years have passed. Imagine being that actor and going through all that make-up over and over just to stand around.

People were praising the scene where he goes berserk and kills a bunch of aliens. In reality, he killed like four. And his rage was sparked when... a random soldier dies? Not that that’s not sad but... kind of an extreme reaction. The tail-of-doom thing was stupid.

I did like him attacking Vuk, short-lived as it was. And yeah, he was great in the space rescue early on, even if he didn’t get any more thank yous than he did in Apocalypse, where he was also totally MVP. And the bit where Selene and Xavier fight for control of Kurt’s mind and keep him teleporting back and forth for what ends up being a ridiculously long scene was funny as hell for me, except that it amounted to nothing (”are you ok?” “no” “great now get me inside”). Chauffeur!Kurt was back in business this movie.

Kurt’s my fav, so his lack of quality use bugs me the most, but I can’t forget about Storm, who was underused in spite of having so many reasons to shine. First of all, that actress seems great. I already liked her in Apocalypse and her scenes in DP with Cyclops, the one where she argues with him and the one where she sides with him, both really screamed “Storm!” to me. But that’s it. That and some lightning is all she gets to do. Why couldn’t she have been Jean’s best friend? Why couldn’t she have shown more of her own leader potential? Gah. Wasted opportunity.

Cyclops was less boring than in Last Stand, given that he dies really early on in that one. But that’s all I can say about him. Why they bothered trying to convince us he’s this rebel-type in Apocalypse is beyond me. He’s just Scott in this one. A whiter white boy never existed.

And midway through the movie I COMPLETELY FORGOT QUICKSILVER WAS EVER THERE. Like he got injured and then just vanished. And I forgot he’d even been there at all. That’s how interested I was guys. I forgot about a whole character. One of the fun ones, no less.

Mystique’s death was dumb but I was glad she was gone for the rest of the movie. It’s the little things.

Beast and Magneto’s motivations sucked.

Xavier’s morally grayness was cool and canon stuff. It was good to see him called out. I was so pissed in Apocalypse when he’d mind-wiped Moira and there seemed to be no consequences for it, just because “oh he meant well.” I liked him a lot in this. It was really the Jean and Xavier Show though, which left the rest of the cast to be set dressing. Kind of annoying. The last scene with Xavier and Magneto was nice.

Can definitely see why there were issues with this movie and Captain Marvel, lol. At one point I said, “This movie is like depressing Captain Marvel.”

The aliens were sooo unrelatable. Like get with the program. No one wants evil aliens who want to destroy the world anymore. They murder people and torture them for their knowledge, and though their numbers are few thanks to the Phoenix Force, even that doesn’t make me sympathetic because they just act like bastards and use everyone and have no relatable moments.

The final battle scene was So. Long. I can handle in with MCU movies because they throw quips around and stuff, plus the rest of the movie has earned the final battle. None of that here, just punching and explosions.

This is just such a sad way for the X-men movies to go out. Can only hope that when they reboot, whenever that will be, however many years out, that they’ll finally get it right. Such a shame, because I really did like this team - at last it felt like a real X-team, and I totally could have gotten behind movies that actually developed the cast. Instead it was like Apocalypse was their birth and DP was their finale, and everything in between is just a mystery. OH WELL.