10 Reasons Why Dark Phoenix Is One Of The Greatest WORST Comic Book Movies Ever
The worst X-Men film ever made is so bad that it's actually amazing.
Across the globe last week, Dark Phoenix positively shattered records, becoming the lowest grossing X-Men film of all time, the most poorly reviewed X-Men film of all time, and pretty much cemented its legacy as one of the biggest and most costly flops of 2019.
But let's not stand on ceremony here - this thing was destined to fail from the get-go.
From the moment Fox announced this film, to when it became clear that Disney had acquired the studio outright, all of it seemed to culminate in a complete and total mess of an opening weekend. But there is still a chance for Dark Phoenix to succeed, just not in the market it's makers had been anticipating.
How so? Because Dark Phoenix isn't just bad. It's so bad that its completely and totally glorious.
It's the kind of film that's so bad that you spend the whole film laughing in disbelief at what is happening before your very eyes. It has a long and very promising future as a midnight drive-in movie for years to come. So let's recount the goofiest, dumbest, and flat-out most hysterical scenes in the film that are sure to earn howling responses from audiences around the world.
Spoilers ahead!
10. The Space Mission
Pretty much right out of the gate, the film gives the audience a heads up for exactly what kind of movie they're in for.
Ideally speaking, a space-set cold opening to an X-Men film should feel exciting. It's something we've never seen before in this universe, it should be fresh and new. And yet, in every way imaginable, it is the opposite of that, inciting spurts of laughter rather than awe.
For crying out loud, the film can't even seem to decide if there is or isn't gravity on the X-Jet when its in space. One shot will have someone floating around, seemingly in zero-G and the next shot will be of characters with longer hair (Jean, Mystique) where there clearly is gravity because their hair isn't floating.
Similarly, it can't decide whether or not the characters can breathe when they teleport over to the space shuttle they're supposed to be saving. When Nightcrawler takes Jean over there, Quicksilver has fixed him up with a makeshift breathing helmet to survive but Jean is left without one and seems fine?
There's also the fact that the entire reason they have to go back to the shuttle is to save one dude who is in a different part of the ship, attempting to fix the dozens of holes in the ship's hull with a wrench.
There's a ton of other goofy stuff like the Quicksilver effects looking terrible, noticeably heavy amounts of makeup on all of the female characters (Jean looks more heavily made-up here than even Mystique does), or Cyclops' laser cannon, and all of it adds up to one wet fart of an opener.