Dark Phoenix: 10 Ways It's The Worst X-Men Film Yet
2. We Hear More Of The Phoenix Than We Actually See It
20th Century Fox
Anyone who's familiar with the Phoenix - whether that be through the X-Men's comics or the nineties animated show - will know that it's an entity to behold. It imbues whoever wields it with an intense power, and it's almost always impressive to see.
The Last Stand struggled with this element last time out, and to Dark Phoenix's credit we do at least get to see the energy take flight in one or two scenes, but Jean barely ever uses it. Instead, the film devotes minutes upon minutes of screentime to talking about what the Phoenix is, what it can do, and why it's so important. It's all tell and no show.
By the team Jean fully embraces its power, viewers are treated to a spectacle that they've already seen in about a dozen X-Men films up until this point. She lifts and spins a train around, forces Charles to walk up the stairs in a questionable-at-best sequence, and then turns a few D'Bari to dust like a slightly more selective Thanos.
The Phoenix just doesn't invoke the kind of awe or terror it should, and for a film that caps off the X-Men series altogether, it's clearly insufficient.
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
