Dark Phoenix: 10 Ways It's The Worst X-Men Film Yet
10. It Takes A Step Back With Wardrobe
20th Century Fox
At the most superficial level, Fox's X-Men films have always been somewhat lacking visually. The bright and bombastic costumes from the X-Men's comics were nowhere to be found with 2000's X-Men, with black leather preferred, and it kickstarted a precedent that would see Marvel's mutants don drab outfit after drab outfit in the sequels and spin-offs to follow.
The series has divested from this approach on occasion, teasing Logan's classic orange costume at the end of the 2013's The Wolverine, while Matthew Vaughn's First Class called back to Jack Kirby's original costumes with a predominantly yellow look. Apocalypse opted for something far less inspiring, but did tease a variation on the team's iconic nineties-era costumes designed by Jim Lee, as seen below:
20th Century Fox
For some reason or another, Dark Phoenix decided not to follow through with Apocalypse's suits. Instead, the designs are lifted from Frank Quitely's designs seen in New X-Men. They looked great on the page, but the point was that they were in themselves a reply to Fox's original X-Men movies; going back to them in Dark Phoenix sort of defeats the point.
Also, they barely wear them in the film anyway. At least those that brief glimpse in Apocalypse was fun?
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.
