The final chapter of the Mutants, X-Men: Dark Phoenix is out and the critics have lashed onto it like crazy! Apparently, everyone feels that the reshoots have made it suffer quite a lot since the entire narrative of the movie has been changed. Well, it’s right to say that but the film didn’t actually deserve the critical reaction that it has got. Sure we didn’t get the big finale that the franchise would have deserved, but that’s because it was never supposed to be the finale.
The actors involved have contracts for one more X-Men film, but the franchise had to come to an end because of the Disney Fox acquisition. So the entire third act was reshot into what we saw on the big screen. We don’t know how things would have been in the original movie, but the third act of this particular film was actually quite great. It produced one of the best fights of the entire franchise!
The following content contains Spoilers for X-Men: Dark Phoenix. You’ve been warned.
Well, other than the reason mentioned above, there’s actually another big reason as to why the ending was forcefully reshot. Apparently, the film would have looked a bit similar to Civil War and Captain Marvel, so the entire third act had to go away! Director Simon Kinberg told io9:
“My original ending didn’t have the entire X-Family together the way they are in the film now. More than Captain Marvel, you could see a lot of Civil War in that ending. Usually, these big, huge action movies have the climactic moment in the third act. I loved the way that Civil War had its big action action set piece where everyone’s facing off more towards the end of the second act rather than in the third, so that after that huge battle, you’re left with Winter Soldier, Captain America, and Iron Man. It’s this telescoped down view of their raw emotions, and I loved how intimate that was. That’s what I was going for with Dark Phoenix’s ending even though it then might have looked like Captain Marvel for about two minutes.”
Well, the change, in the end, made the film smaller. But we cannot say that the ending that we got was totally bad. Apparently, Jean Grey sacrificing herself and giving in to the Phoenix Force was actually pretty cool considering how it all was much different than The Last Stand. The rest of the end was a little too mediocre, but obviously, things would have been different if the film was allowed to come out when it was originally intended.
It is not really clear whether Disney got a say in the changes that happened with X-Men: Dark Phoenix, but all signs do point towards that. But what’s done is done now. At least the film turned out to be better than Apocalypse. “We see it as an absolute win.”
Written and directed by Simon Kinberg, Dark Phoenix stars James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Sophie Turner, Tye Sheridan, Alexandra Shipp, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Evan Peters, and Jessica Chastain. Here’s the official synopsis:
“This is the story of one of the X-Men’s most beloved characters, Jean Grey, as she evolves into the iconic DARK PHOENIX. During a life-threatening rescue mission in space, Jean is hit by a cosmic force that transforms her into one of the most powerful mutants of all. Wrestling with this increasingly unstable power as well as her own personal demons, Jean spirals out of control, tearing the X-Men family apart and threatening to destroy the very fabric of our planet. The film is the most intense and emotional X-Men movie ever made. It is the culmination of 20 years of X-Men movies, as the family of mutants that we’ve come to know and love must face their most devastating enemy yet — one of their own.”
X-Men: Dark Phoenix is currently playing in the theatres. Go enjoy it while it lasts.
