okay, yes, so maybe in this new timeline jean grey caused her parents to get into a horrible car accident, but in the old timeline she was Smug™ so who can say which was the worse version of events
so one of the realities of having a franchise that lasts twenty years over the course of thirteen movies (and two TV series!) is that occasionally you're going to have some shit films. this isn't necessarily a death knell or anything, hell, the X-Men series itself managed to survive the double whammy of The Last Stand and then Origins: Wolverine. But with those films (and X-Men: Apocalypse), there still manages to be something fun about them, whether it's spectacle or some kind of goofy bad-movie-schlock factor.
so dark phoenix sucks, right
and like it sucks in particularly unfortunate ways. it's not like fun schlocky badness like Origins: Wolverine or have the absurd spectacle of something like Apocalypse. it's pretty blatant that almost none of the actors really want to be here and there's a lot of incredible phoned in performances, with one in particular that i'll get to when it becomes relevant. i think the only person who actually gave a shit in this movie is fichael massbender just judging by performance (but then Magneto's always been the most interesting character in any of these films).
one has to wonder how much of the "we really wish we weren't here right now" energy was because of the impending announcement of 21st century fox's acquisition by disney, which was announced 2 months after initial filming wrapped. they almost certainly were aware of the possibility that it was happening, right? not to mention the plot threads they ended up needing to cut out of this and The New Mutants (which had its own wacky brand of behind the scenes issues) when it became clear that the story wouldn't be continuing. Remember all the setup the Essex Corporation got over the last few movies? almost kind of bums me out that we'll never find out how they planned to justify a goofy codename like "Mister Sinister" in this franchise.
oh, and shoutout to Fox being like "we don't NEED the X-Men branding for our movie to be successful, we're just gonna call it DARK PHOENIX" only for every single home release to be updated to "X-Men: Dark Phoenix." Way to commit to the bit you guys.
okay so let's talk about mystique real quick
so if i recall correctly, jennifer lawrence was pretty adamant about how she couldn't wait to like. not have to play mystique anymore. i think her main issue was with the scenes where she had to be in full makeup and how long of a process that was. which, okay, fair. i've heard about movies where extensive makeup and prosthetics are used, it sounds like a long and tedious process to have to do multiple times over a shoot.
now mystique in Dark Phoenix (left) looks noticeably different to how she looked in the last couple films (right, from Apocalypse). The shade of blue is maybe a bit closer to what they had for her in First Class, but overall the look seems... well it looks like less effort went into it. this isn't necessarily a criticism, if she hated being in the makeup chair for hours on end that much then i'm glad they could find a look that would accommodate her. except the wig maybe. the new wig sucks.
this does compound with the fact that jennifer lawrence is one of the many, MANY actors in this film that just totally phone in their performance, which is then further compounded by the fact that this is the movie where mystique fukken dies. so we're talking about an actor who clearly doesn't want to be here for anything more than a paycheck, in low-effort makeup, and her character isn't going to be here for very long anyway. sort of a "they clearly don't care, so why should i" kind of situation we find ourselves in.
so one of the more interesting things that seemed to be suggested by Days of Future Past is that because Xavier now knew all the events of the original timeline he could potentially avoid all the mistakes the original Xavier made, resulting in the happier timeline at the end of DoFP. this was further supported by the finale of Apocalypse where Xavier encourages Jean to unleash her dormant Phoenix abilities (which in the movies were something she always had, just sort of simmering beneath the surface), in contrast with Xavier in The Last Stand forcibly suppressing Jean's power over the course of many years. so hey, that's cool! the dark phoenix never needs to happen again!
except, whoops, the dark phoenix saga is one of the more iconic x-men storylines, so uhhhhh we gotta give it another shot.
so the folks behind X-Men: Dark Phoenix decide to throw all the stuff w/r/t the Phoenix being the dormant manifestation of Jean's incredibly powerful abilities established in the movie universe in the fuckin gahbage and instead re-establish it as the Phoenix Force, a cosmic death cloud that Jean takes into herself. now, the X-Men series has never been, like, particularly concerned with continuity (hey why do we have two different versions of emma frost back to back) but it does feel a might bit weird to take something that's established in, like, 2 or 3 films at this point and be like "nah let's just do it like it is in the comics, it's fine."
(also, fun fact, they wanted to do the phoenix saga all the way back in X2 but the studio didn't want to get into "cosmic" Marvel so early on, what with superhero movies still trying to get back on their feet after the absolute disaster that was the mid-90s. then when they did the Dark Phoenix saga they ended up cutting out the cosmic stuff anyway. this movie was made after the MCU had gotten into both cosmic and mystical stuff so they were probably feeling a bit more confident. not that it helped.)
alright i'm including both the original image and the fucked up attempt at brightening it i did because it's kind of hilarious
so these are the d'bari, aliens featured in the original Dark Phoenix saga and (in this film) shapeshifters, and the reason i botched this brightening job is because i can't recall a single moment in the whole film where their power ranger putty ass design is seen in anything other than bad-cg-obscuring darkness. they were supposed to be the Hellfire Club from First Class, including bringing back Emma Frost, but uhhhh idk i guess the studio changed their minds and wanted aliens, who knows
Their leader is Vuk, who takes the form of Jessica Chastain. I have nothing interesting to say about her or, really, any of them, other than that Jessica Chastain wasn't even aware of her own character's name until the movie actually came out, which i think is really funny.
i don't know a lot about dazzler but what i do know about her would suggest that she's worth more than being just a barely-focused-on cameo in essentially the background of a scene which, to compare to previous movies in the series, makes her this film's jubilee
Xavier in X2: "I can't use concentrate too hard when using Cerebro because if I do then I could kill whoever I'm concentrating on."
Xavier in Dark Phoenix: "Hey Beast crank that mf thing up to 11 I'm gonna go poking around in Jean Grey's Memory Goo™."
Y'know, perhaps the lesson to be learned from the events of X-Men: The Last Stand is that forcibly suppressing parts of a person's mind without their consent is a bad idea. Surely New Timeline Xavier, having seen the result of this upon reading Logan's memories, would know this.
New Timeline Xavier's stupid ass: