Dark Phoenix

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

It felt terribly, terribly scrappy.

Dark Phoenix ends up being what everyone feared it would be: a movie that didn’t matter, at all. One that didn’t even try to pay homage to an extraordinary saga that notably influenced the comic-book genre.

This fresh attempt is not poorly made exactly as The Last Stand was&#59; instead it is a fairly risible effort for all new reasons.

This is not the movie that Dark Phoenix deserves.

I can’t in good conscience recommend that anyone spend their hard earned money to go see this film in theaters, but if you are a die-hard X-Men fan like me you might find that it’s a surprisingly fun ride.