Magneto: Dawn of Ideologies.” And the action/fantasy elements remain stubbornly “grounded” and “realistic” even as the MCU has taken their heroes to fantastical worlds and on impossible adventures.
The films still revolve around the “Xavier vs. They’re still afraid of the comic book costumes, the comic book soap opera plotting and the larger-than-life fantasy material. It’s 2019 and the X-Men franchise is still afraid of its comic book roots. The franchise refused to evolve (in terms of stories and visuals).
#DARK PHOENIX MOVIE#
Dark Phoenix was the first X-Men movie without any references to Wolverine, and that’s at least part of why it didn’t bring out the general consumers.
His Logan has been both a sarcastic audience surrogate (think Han Solo or Jack Sparrow) and a hero trying to do right in a world gone wrong (think Captain America). Whatever your feelings about the film franchise turning into “Wolverine and his X-Men,” Hugh Jackman’s breakout turn is a huge reason why the films resonated with general audiences. One of the reasons X-Men: The Last Stand didn’t quite work as a “faithful” adaptation (or as a movie) is because it took an arc that belonged to Cyclops and gave it to Wolverine. Fair or not, audiences aren’t nearly as interested in an X-Men movie that doesn’t star Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen and Halle Berry. Even after X-Men: Days of Future Past took the franchise to unforeseen heights ($748 million in 2014), Apocalypse took it back down to Earth ($544 million, including just $155 million domestic). But even with strong reviews, a buzzy cast (including future “stars” Michael Fassbender and Jennifer Lawrence) and a “before it was cool” genre appropriation, the 1960's spy thriller earned just $353 million worldwide on a $160 million budget. Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men: First Class is arguably the best X-Men movie thus far, give or take my feelings on a given day for X2: X-Men United. Like Star Trek into Darkness ($467 million on a $190 million budget in 2013) and Amazing Spider-Man 2 ($709 million on a $255 million budget in 2014), they chased away the general audiences to play to the vocal minority.Īudiences vastly prefer the original X-Men class over the “ First Class” variations. And to those folks, Dark Phoenix was not just a sequel to a disliked predecessor but an inexplicably less fantastical redo of a plot they had already seen in movies before. It sold more tickets in North America than any X-Men movie save for Deadpool. While hardcore fans may have mourned The Last Stand’s halfhearted treatment of the “Phoenix Saga,” general audiences thought it was “fine, I guess” to the tune of $459 million worldwide in 2006. I (and others) have warned them about this for years, since before X-Men: Apocalypse opened in theaters. General audiences already saw the “Phoenix Saga” play out in X-Men: The Last Stand. And then they moved it to this weekend only to see Alita: Battle Angel over-perform to the tune of $405 million. They moved the film from November of 2018 to February of 2018 only to watch Bohemian Rhapsody earn a stunning $900 million worldwide.
But two date changes, each one frankly less commercial than the last, was a sign that Fox (and eventually Disney) didn’t view this final X-Men flick as a major priority.
One date change can be a sign that the film is taking its time to get the effects (or, heaven for forbid, the screenplay) in ship-shape without breaking the bank over working its effects teams to death. The constant date changes created an impression of a doomed project.
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