I know, again that universes are all the rage right now and we have to talk about another one here. The X-Men Universe has had such an interesting history that I think it deserves to be bullet pointed out.

• X-Men 1 came out in 2000 and changed the way people view Super Hero Movies forever. It was almost perfectly casted and created a superstar in Hugh Jackman.
• X2 was even better and expanded the universe to give a glimpse into the future of expanded movie universes.
• X3 was a down moment for the franchise as it did not live up to expectations and botched the Dark Phoenix Storyline (wait there was already a Dark Phoenix Movie? more to come later).
• They Reboot with the fantastic First Class and create a world where they could possibly just start the universe over.
• Then with Days of Future Past, even with it being good, inexplicably linked the two casts and created numerous timeline errors that have just jumbled everything up. But….

I mean……Swag!

• They came back with Age of Apocalypse that was just a complete and total misfire and almost killed the franchise.

Which leads us to the Simon Kinberg directed version of the Dark Phoenix story line. I guess they felt they did not do right by it last time so they tried to right their wrongs of the past. This tactic did not work at all because this movie was one of the worst the franchise has ever put out. They have all these incredible actors and characters and it is amazing how lifeless the script was and how bored all the actors seemed to be. It is like they slept walk through a dress rehearsal at some points.

Obviously, Dark Phoenix is a famous X-Men story line where, by virtue of massive amounts of radiation, Jean Grey becomes the all powerful Phoenix. She starts to spin out of control and eventually is convinced by an alien (Jessica Chastain) to turn against her fellow mutants. All the characters are back and of course there is a classic Professor X and Magneto showdown, that might be a little too Meta even for X-Men.

There were some great moments, however most of the action scenes even looked cheap and did not really capture the team aspect of what makes the X-Men so great. I am happy Disney finally has a hold of them so maybe we can get a cool X-Men movie again.

Stock Watch

Stock Down – EVERYONE  has their stock down for this one. The only redeeming performance was Quicksilver and he was barely in the movie at all.

Everyone else either put in a rough performance or just did not get enough to do to make their screen time worthwhile.

*A couple other tidbits

• Again the timelines make zero sense and kind of nullify the end of Days of Future Past.
• Why was there just no humor in this movie at all. Just throw a couple laughs in every once in a while to lighten the mood it might help.
• The makeup on Jennifer Lawrence looked awful just being blunt about that.

This is a tough movie because there were a lot of Great moments int he X-Men franchise. I hate that it goes out with this version of Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix, but that is the way it is. We will see the future of X-Men in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Juice Rating:

*All of my movie ratings can be found here.