I honestly haven’t paid much attention to the various X-Men movies from the past few years. I didn’t even watch the entire X-Men: Apocalypse movie, I just caught some of it on HBO a few months ago and I felt it was a big MEH. What’s weird is that out of all the superhero universes, I think X-Men is my favorite? The DCU and MCU bore me to tears, sorry not sorry. But I have historically enjoyed Professor X and Magneto and Storm and Jean Grey and Mystique and all of ‘em. I still think X-Men: First Class is the best offering from the X-Men universe, hands down. But then they drove the “prequels” into the ground, and there’s very little of connection or consistency between the characters and films at this point. It’s all kind of nonsensical and tepid.
So I watched the new trailer for Dark Phoenix cold, without knowing much about this film other than “Sansa Stark plays Jean Grey.” Sophie Turner came on board to play the young Jean Grey – a role originated by the underrated Famke Janssen – and I was truly expecting to write something about how I’ll always stan for Sansa but Sophie doesn’t have the chops to play this role. Except I’m not going to write that. This actually looks… good? Well, it doesn’t look BAD, let’s start there.
I honestly didn’t know that they were getting the band back together for this one – James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence and Nicholas Hoult all returned for this one, and it looks like Hoult is doing some ACTING. Proper acting. Sophie also looks like she’s really doing some acting too. Of all the X-Men characters, Jean Grey has the least amount of, like, action and actorly “business” to do. She can read minds and move sh-t with her mind and, apparently, she’s absolutely full of rage. Perhaps Jean Grey is the Female Rage Monster and feminist icon we deserve now.
Also worth noting: Simon Kinberg directed this and it was written by a team of men, and while Bryan Singer had something to do with this, he’s not listed with any credit as a producer, writer, whatever.
The Phoenix will rise #DarkPhoenix #XMen pic.twitter.com/wOnPUDhTQf
— X-Men: Dark Phoenix (@DarkPhoenix2019) September 26, 2018
Photos courtesy of WENN.
I think I’m looking forward to it. I just wish Lawrence want in it… I’ve gotten to a point where I’m completely turned off with her screen presence.
Storm was always my fav X-men
Totally agree about Storm. An origin story with Storm would be fire right now, the climate for such a movie has never been more welcoming.
So Over the X-Men movies until they do a Storm origins movie. What Singer did to Storm was terrible, making her a mere back ground character. I don’t like any of the new actors playing my favorite characters, the last 2 movies were trash IMHO. Stewart & McKellan Rock!! Maybe we’ll get a X-men – Black Panther cross over with TChalla & Storm since the Disney merger.
Looks like Disney/Fox merger is NOT happening!!
Storm and Rogue … always. Total X-Men fan girl over here. Nerd alert and proud of it!
Me toooo, always Storm and Rogue, and a proud member of the girl fandom 🙂
Bryan Singer’s head should be on a spike. How’s he still getting work?
I thought Sophie looked so beautiful when she said, “I came looking for answers” in the trailer
I actually like Sophie as an actress. I don’t think she’s *great*, but I think with a strong script/role, then she can be really good. I do think she would benefit from a better posture and maybe changing the way she speaks/hits certain marks when she says lines? There is something inherently *teenager* about her–she comes off a lot younger than she is, to me.
Me too. She was more than fine in Apocalypse. Especially the scene where she was finally unleashing the Phoenix energy, after the being summoned by the ever soulful James Mcavoy( he plays the Professor with so.much heart, he’s the chief reason I’m following the reboot)..
Too bad Angelina Jolie couldn’t play the Jessica Chastain character!! Yeah, they wanted Angelina in the movie, but it didn’t happen 🙁
You’re were meh on Captain Marvel but think this is good? /:
Xmen franchise is my favourite but the movies over the years were very underwhelming.
Also Sansa really can’t carry a movie. Say all you want about JLaw but she got a lot of screen presence.
Anyone else think the funeral was Mystique‘s?
It’s going to be an awesome ride, just like the other X-Men flicks. I really liked First Class too.
Their connection and consistency with one another can be checked via Wikipedia.
Or a comic book, but what do I know…
Can’t say I care how good it looks or not, tbh, the Fox presentation of the mutant characters and stories, for the most part, has always relied on playing favourites and lacked cohesion across films. Not to mention, Bryan Singer’s creative involvement in that franchise and the soft reset with First Class – when every international character was suddenly American, and it was basically a giant recruitment ad with J’I don’t want to be covered in blue paint’Law playing Mystique – threw me out a while ago. Same goes for New Mutants. They can release them just to get them out of the way; I’ll be breathing a sigh of relief for that reason only.
I liked the first two Fantastic Four movies – despite the epic fanboy hate they got (and still get) – and Alan Cumming as Nightcrawler, Ellen Page as Kitty Pryde, and some others but that’s pretty much it.
But basically, just gonna sit this one out and wait until Marvel Studios hires Saoirse Ronan to play Jean Grey. They’ll have the galactic universe, characters, and politics set up, and done the world-building work so that the story will have actual meaning and consequences.
If a struggle reboot after 20 years of franchise ownership is the best Fox can do, I’m relieved the better, more consistent story-tellers might be getting a chance to recast, evolve, and develop these stories and characters soon. (Not to mention that if they deliberately hold off on introducing Prof X, Jean Grey, Magneto, and Wolverine at this point I wouldn’t blame them but would probably thank them: those characters have been so overplayed.)