Dark Phoenix: 10 Ways It's The Worst X-Men Film Yet
5. Not Even DAZZLER Can Save It
20th Century Fox/Marvel
Dazzler is up there with the best X-Men. She started out as a publicity stunt to sell records, but her eighties pop star aesthetic endured and so did the character, with the character (real name, Alison Blaire) shifting to different genres to accommodate changing trends.
Ali finally makes their long awaited debut in Dark Phoenix played by Halston Sage, performing her own concert while the students at the X-Mansion relax, and it's probably the coolest thirty seconds in the film. Her powers are in full effect - she's singing - and she looks really cool while doing it.
And yet, somehow - someway - Dark Phoenix is still a bad film. How you manage that with Dazzler amongst your ranks is mind-boggling.
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.
