The Big Picture · Review · Discussion
June 7, 2019/ 53 min/ Sean Fennessey · Chris Ryan
Sean Fennessey and Chris Ryan review 'Dark Phoenix', panned by critics, and use it as an excuse to go through the entire 20-year X-Men franchise: the mismanaged timelines, the actors who outgrew the material, and what Fox's sale to Disney means for whatever comes next.
11 films across 2 segments.
AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.
'Dark Phoenix'
Writer-director Simon Kinberg's debut and the franchise's supposed send-off, savaged by critics (reviews in the 20s on Rotten Tomatoes) for a humorless second act that doesn't match its slapped-on first act or its confusing train-set third act. Sean and Chris single out Jessica Chastain's bizarre villain performance and note Sophie Turner gets blown off the screen playing Jean Grey/Phoenix.
The X-Men Franchise, 20 Years Lateron the eve of the Disney-Fox merger
The movie that proved CGI had caught up enough to make a comic book movie work; Sean argues it set the template the MCU would later follow.
Both hosts call it radical for its time, before Spider-Man or the MCU existed; Chris reads it as a coded story about coming out of the closet.
Brett Ratner's version, made after Bryan Singer backed out; fuses the Dark Phoenix and 'gifted' storylines and gets more credit from Chris on rewatch than he remembered giving it.
David Benioff's original script got reworked by Skip Woods into more of a straight action movie, one of several times the studio overruled the writer's original take.
Both call it the series' creative high point: Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman's script and a stacked young cast (Fassbender, McAvoy, Lawrence) reset the timeline and the franchise's confidence.
Singer's return; Sean argues it could have been a top-five superhero movie had Vaughn stayed on to direct it instead.
Kinberg's first directing-adjacent writing credit on the series; both note Fassbender and McAvoy are already visibly better than the material by this point.
The outlier: the one X-Men-adjacent movie in this stretch where a director got to make a specific, funny movie on its own terms.
The consensus best of the whole series for both hosts, and, per Chris, the only entry with a consistent tone start to finish, earned by James Mangold and Hugh Jackman fighting for an R rating.
Josh Boone's spinoff, already delayed multiple times as of this recording; neither host is confident what role, if any, it'll end up playing.
Also mentioned raised along the way
Comic-book comparisons Batman v Superman: Dawn of JusticeThe Dark KnightBatman BeginsBlack PantherCaptain America: The Winter SoldierCaptain America: Civil WarAvengers: Infinity WarCaptain MarvelGuardians of the GalaxySuicide SquadFantastic Four
In passing Terminator 2: Judgment DayMission: Impossible IIRoundersReady Player OneZero Dark ThirtyAtomic BlondePowderFord v FerrariAlways Be My MaybeWar for the Planet of the ApesHeaven's GateThe MartianThe Hunger GamesRed SparrowSilver Linings PlaybookGladiatorThe Empire Strikes BackDie Hard
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
TV Game of ThronesChernobyl