According to Time Out’s Phil de Semlyen, the movie is “a fairly pointless retread of Chris Claremont and John Byrne’s ‘The Dark Phoenix Saga’, which we’ve already seen (and hated) in Brett Ratner’s 2006 disaster X-Men: The Last Stand. Of course, there’s also the option that maybe … it’s just not that good. “There is a fascinating, gut-wrenching story to be told about a young woman’s inner conflict between the societal pressure to curb her darker emotions, and the precarious freedom that comes with surrendering to them fully. “The most problematic aspect is that deep down, this isn’t Jean’s story at all. Or perhaps it’s writer/director Kinberg’s treatment of the material that’s at fault, as Anne Cohen suggests at Refinery 29. The film is like an adaptation of the original Dark Phoenix comics, and also of the Anchorman ‘Well, that escalated quickly’ meme. Everything happens too fast, until the whole structure goes down in flames.” The whole movie hinges on Jean Grey, a character we hardly know (the Sophie Turner version was introduced in a minor role in X-Men: Apocalypse) and her relationships to a team of heroes we’ve hardly seen. Multiple characters undergo life-altering changes of perspective - flipping from good to evil, sympathetic to monstrous - in a matter of seconds. That might be a flaw of the format, suggests Screencrush’s Matt Singer, who writes, “It’s very hard to tell this story in a satisfying way in this little amount of time. The men who have anchored most of the X-Men outings are just spinning their wheels here, and while Jean’s central dilemma is certainly dramatic enough, and is most closely entwined with the actions of two other women, what should have registered as genuinely powerful instead plays out in a pretty low-key way.”
“Compared to the conclusions of other major franchises - the most recent being Avengers: Endgame - this one seems distinctly minor-league. “At its heart, this is a story about what an immeasurably talented woman chooses to do with her life unfortunately, it doesn’t play like one, as Kinberg pitches his script in the most melodramatic direction possible while the exceptional impulses multiplying inside Jean grow as well as fester by the moment,” writes Todd McCarthy in The Hollywood Reporter’s review.
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