Dark Phoenix Trailer: 9 Reasons To Be Worried

6. The Totally Bland, Boring Visuals

The X-Men franchise has been pretty inconsistent from a visual perspective, and just as Apocalypse basically resembled a soulless, generic big-budget tentpole, so too does Dark Phoenix.

There are far too many blandly shot scenes of people talking in this trailer and nowhere near enough awesome money shots that might, you know, actually sell the movie. Why are the X-Men just standing around chatting rather than actually being X-Men?

The film's visual style looks absolutely boilerplate and not remotely creative in any way, and even when the action kicks off as Jean flips a few police cars, it's shot with an awkward Saving Private Ryan-esque shutter speed that looks quite repulsive for this type of movie.

That's not to forget the howlingly ropey visual effects, especially that blurry, goopy shot of Xavier being apparently consumed by the Phoenix Force. If we accept that Dark Phoenix has a budget close to Apocalypse's $178 million, it's kinda odd that the first trailer makes little indication of that ballpark price tag.

This could perhaps be a result of the movie's ongoing re-shoots and Fox's possible desire not to include footage that's been cut from the film, but even so, there's shockingly little impact to most of the images on display here.