The spectacle is entertaining, up to a point, but even the digital wizardry wears thin, and Dark Phoenix turns into a standard-brand miasma of explosions, collisions and swirling force fields.

| Nov 11, 2020

Turner delivers a solid performance as a young woman coming to grips with an unknown force, and James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender maintain the frenemy bond we've grown to love.

| Feb 19, 2020

A middlin' X-men effort that cheats the saga of its past, present and future, messing with the story-line in unacceptable ways. Plus, it looks big and cheap - but mostly cheap.

| Original Score: 2 | Jul 6, 2019

Outgunned on the action front by box-office rivals and too nervous to tell a more intimate story, Dark Phoenix leaves the franchise running on empty.

| Jun 20, 2019

It's as if the writer-director [Simon Kinberg] is using a superhero movie to rediscover the roots of soap opera. His emphasis on everything Young about the franchise swamps everything that's Adult.

| Jun 17, 2019

It felt terribly, terribly scrappy.

| Jun 15, 2019

Of course it's best not to make too much of this. It's just a movie about mutant superheroes and mutant or alien super-villains, after all...

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 14, 2019

Dark Phoenix is the greyest (pun intended) superhero spin-off yet.

| Jun 14, 2019

There are strong action set pieces here, but for the most part, Dark Phoenix chews through story so quickly that the narrative ultimately lacks impact.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jun 14, 2019

The franchise never established the foundation needed to tell this story. That amongst other problems keeps it from being an emotional character journey and makes it yet another blockbuster spectacle that coasts on surface level entertainment value.

| Original Score: 6/10 | Jun 12, 2019

The movie's weaknesses make more glaring the movie's hollowness where the storyline's feminism once was.

| Jun 11, 2019

A stupendously dull series-ender without a shred of wit, narrative thrust or genuine emotional force.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 10, 2019

Even by the uneven standards of the X-Men movies, this is a glum exercise in film-making by rote.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 9, 2019

Worst of all, because Jean isn't at the center of her own story, the film's climax ends up being something of a bizarrely unemotional irritation.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 8, 2019

It didn't have to end this way...It didn't have to end with so little emotion, so little meaning - with a sad little speech about evolving, for Phoenix's sake.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Jun 8, 2019

If future filmmakers can learn these lessons from the travesty of "Dark Phoenix," it won't have been a total waste.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jun 8, 2019

This is the end of an era, 19 years, and...they really played it safe. The characters say and do things that don't lead to anything. It should've been so much better than it was.

| Original Score: C | Jun 7, 2019

The final battle takes place aboard a moving train that feels like it's headed nowhere. At this point, it's a perfect metaphor for the "X-Men" series.

| Original Score: D+ | Jun 7, 2019

It's either an origin story or a series finale, but it's definitely a low point in the "X-Men" franchise.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jun 7, 2019

It's hard to be engaged when the characters themselves seem so detached.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 7, 2019