Thursday, May 13, 2021

Review: "Dark Phoenix" is a Failed X-Men Resurrection

TRASH IN MY EYE No. 33 of 2021 (No. 1771) by Leroy Douresseaux

[This review was originally posted on Patreon.]

Dark Phoenix (2019)
Running time:  114 minutes (1 hour, 54 minutes)
MPAA – PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action including some gun play, disturbing images, and brief strong language
DIRECTOR:  Simon Kinberg
WRITERS:  Simon Kinberg (based on Marvel Comics characters)
PRODUCERS:  Hutch Parker, Simon Kinberg, Lauren Shuler Donner, and Todd Hallowell
CINEMATOGRAPHER:  Mauro Fiore
EDITORS:  Lee Smith
COMPOSER:  Hans Zimmer

SUPERHERO/SCI-FI/ACTION/DRAMA

Starring:  James McAvoy, Sophie Turner, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence, Nicholas Hoult, Evan Peters, Tye Sheridan, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Alexandra Shipp, Summer Fontana, Scott Shepherd, Ato Essandoh, and Jessica Chastain

Dark Phoenix is a 2019 superhero movie from writer-director Simon Kinberg.  It is 20th Century Fox’s twelfth film based on Marvel Comics’ X-Men comic book franchise.  This movie is also a sequel to X-Men: Apocalypse (2016).  In Dark Phoenix (also known as X-Men: Dark Phoenix), one of the X-Men begins to develop incredible powers that will force the rest of the X-Men to decide if this one mutant's life is worth more than all of humanity.

Dark Phoenix opens in 1975 and introduces eight-year-old Jean Grey (Summer Fontana) and depicts the automobile accident that changes her life and brings Charles Xavier/Professor X (James McAvoy) into her life.  Then, the story moves to 1992 and to Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters.  There, Xavier has turned the X-Men into what some describe as a team of superheroes that steps in to protect and help mankind when no one else can.

The latest emergency involves a distress signal from a recently launched space shuttle, which has been critically damaged by a solar flare-like energy.  Xavier sends his strike team, “the X-Men”:  Hank McCoy/Beast (Nicholas Hoult), Raven/Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), Peter Maximoff/Quicksilver (Evan Peters), Jean Grey (Sophie Turner), Scott Summers/Cyclops (Tye Sheridan), Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee), and Ororo Munroe/Storm (Alexandra Shipp) to rescue the astronauts aboard the space shuttle.  Raven goes along on the mission, but she is furious that Xavier puts his students in danger for the rest of humanity, which she still regards with suspicion.

The X-Men arrive in their jet, the Blackbird, to find the situation rapidly deteriorating and the strange energy mass approaching the shuttle.  While saving the astronauts, Jean is struck by the energy and absorbs it into her body.  This apparently helps her to miraculously survive the blast of the shuttle explosion.  The X-Men and Xavier's other students start calling Jean “Phoenix” because of her miraculously survival.

However, the result of absorbing that energy causes Jean's psychic powers to be greatly amplified.  In turn, that causes her emotional state to begin to deteriorate, leading to tragedy.  Soon, the X-Men are hunting Jean Grey, and so are the X-Men's adversary/rival, Erik Lensherr/Magneto (Michael Fassbender), and also the U.S. militaryVuk, the leader of a shape-shifting alien race known as the D'Bari, is also searching for Jean, specifically for the power Jean harbors inside her.  Can Xavier and the X-Men save Phoenix, or will their act of salvation doom humanity?

Both film adaptations of the classic X-Men comic book story arc, “The Dark Phoenix Saga,” 2006's X-Men: The Last Stand and 2019's Dark Phoenix, fail to approach the riveting melodrama and enthralling soap opera that readers found and continue to find in Marvel Comics's The X-Men #129-138 (publication cover dates:  January to October 1980).  The writers of both films alter the core original story – to the movies' detriment.

Writer-director Simon Kinberg apparently directed some of 2014's X-Men: Days of Future Past and much or most of 2016's X-Men: Apocalypse, although Bryan Singer is credited as the director of both films.  I consider both films to be disappointments, one more than the other.  True to form, Simon Kinberg delivers in Dark Phoenix a film that is mostly a dud.

The storytelling feels contrived, and the screenwriting offers laughable concepts, especially the entire D'Bari alien subplot; that's just some stupid shit.  Dark Phoenix is one of two final films in 20th Century Fox's X-Men film franchise (the other being the long-delayed The New Mutants, which was finally released in 2020).  I say that Dark Phoenix is deeply disappointing, but honestly, I did not expect much of it, from the moment I first heard that it was going into production.  In fact, this film is a devolution from the franchise's peak, which was released 16 years prior to Dark Phoenix, the fantastic X2: X-Men United (2003).

Even the acting is bad.  Playing Vuk the alien is the lowest low point of Jessica Chastain's career, which includes two Academy Award nominations.  James McAvoy as Xavier, Sophie Turner as Jean Grey, and Michael Fassbender as Erik are overwrought, and when they are trying to have serious conversations, they deliver hackneyed and derivative dialogue and unoriginal speeches.  Maybe their bad acting is a result of uninspired script writing.  However, I did find that Tye Sheridan as Scott, Kodi Smit-McPhee as Kurt, and Alexandra Shipp as Ororo made the most of their scenes, especially Sheridan.  If his Scott Summers/Cyclops were the center of Dark Phoenix, the film would be much better.  Because of him, I am giving this film a higher grade than I planned to do.

Dark Phoenix just doesn't work, and it rarely connected with me.  I don't think that it will connect with audiences the way some of the best and most popular X-Men films did.  Oh, well – let's hope that Marvel Studios does better with its planned X-Men films...

4 of 10
C

Thursday, March 25, 2020


The text is copyright © 2021 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog or site for reprint or syndication rights and fees.

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Wednesday, May 12, 2021

Comics Review: GEIGER #2

GEIGER #2
IMAGE COMICS/Mad Ghost

STORY: Geoff Johns
ART: Gary Frank
COLORS: Brad Anderson
LETTERS: Rob Leigh
EDITOR: Pat McCallum
COVER: Gary Frank with Brad Anderson
VARIANT COVER ARTISTS: Bryan Hitch; Mahmud Asrar; Gary Frank with Brad Anderson
32pp, Colors, 3.99 U.S. (May 2021)

Rated “T+/Teen Plus”

Geiger created by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank


Geiger is a new comic book series from writer Geoff Johns and artist Gary Frank.  Published by Image Comics, Geiger is set on a dying Earth in the years after a nuclear war ravaged the planet.  Colorist Brad Anderson and letterer Rob Leigh complete the series' creative team.

Geiger is set 20 years after the nuclear conflict known as the “Unknown War” ravaged the planet, turning Earth into a dying world.  In the state of Nevada, desperate outlaws battle for survival in a world of rapidly disappearing resources and supplies.  In Boulder City, Nevada, there resides the fearsome man known by many names:  Joe Glow, The Meltdown Man, and the Walking Bomb, to name a few.  But before the war, he was simply a man named Tariq Geiger.  So who or what is Geiger, now?

Geiger #2 opens with a flashback into Tariq's past life.  Then, the story moves fully into Las Vegas.  There, a waitress in the fiefdom of Camelot has a plan to save her children – her older child, daughter Hailee, and younger child, son Henry – from the perverted desires of the thugs that rule Camelot.

Carolina's plan involves a powerful relic from before the war.  Will this relic bring hope or finish what the war started?  It depends on who gets Carolina's prize – the “Casino Warlords of Las Vegas” or the monster called Geiger.

THE LOWDOWN:  As first issues go, Geiger #1 was mostly an introduction, kind of like a prologue.  It introduced the title character, Geiger, giving readers a look at who he was in the past and a glance at who he is now.  Honestly, Geiger #1 was not Geoff Johns or Gary Frank's best work.

Still, I was intrigued by the concept, and Geiger #2 starts to deliver on the series' potential.  I thought that once writer Geoff Johns took readers into Las Vegas the intensity would rise, and it does.  If Geiger is the hero of Geiger the comic book, Las Vegas, in the form of “Casino Warlords,” will be the source of the villains and adversaries.  From what we see of Vegas, I think Johns is promising lots of conflict and action-driven drama.

In Geiger, Frank's pencil art is rougher and less refined than his usual work, which, as I wrote before, is a good thing here.  Geiger is dark, and perhaps, it will be apocalyptic, so with colorist Brad Anderson, Frank is preparing us for action, but not the shiny, superhero kind.  I think I should keep following Geiger … for the time being.

I READS YOU RECOMMENDS:  Fans of Geoff Johns and Gary Frank will want to check out Geiger.

A-

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"


https://twitter.com/geoffjohns
http://www.madghost.com/
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https://imagecomics.com/


The text is copyright © 2021 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog or site for reprint and syndication rights and fees.

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Tuesday, May 11, 2021

Comics Review: THE SILVER COIN #2

THE SILVER COIN #2 (OF 5)
IMAGE COMICS

STORY: Kelly Thompson
ART: Michael Walsh
COLORS: Michael Walsh
LETTERS: Michael Walsh
EDITOR: Chris Hampton
COVER: Michael Walsh
VARIANT COVER ARTIST: Tula Lotay
28pp, Colors, 3.99 U.S. (May 2021)

Rated “M/ Mature”

The Silver Coin is created by Michael Walsh, Ed Brisson, Jeff Lemire, Kelly Thompson, and Chip Zdarsky

“Girls of Summer”

The Silver Coin is a new horror comic book anthology and miniseries published by Image Comics.  It is the creation of artist Michael Walsh and writers Ed Brisson, Jeff Lemire, Kelly Thompson, and Chip Zdarsky.  Each issue of this five-issue miniseries will tell a tale of terror that is set in a supernatural world in which the mysterious “Silver Coin” changes the lives of those who take possession of it.  The second issue is written by Kelly Thompson and drawn, colored, and lettered by Michael Walsh.

The Silver Coin #2 (entitled “Girls of Summer”) opens in 1993.  Fiona “Pickle” Watterman is excited about attending a girls' summer camp, especially because she is a fan of slasher horror movies.  Maybe, a killer will attack the camp, and Fiona will be prepared to fend off the killer because of her knowledge of horror movies.

What Fiona is not prepared for is how idyllic the camp is... or for sharing a bunkhouse with a bunch of mean girls (bitches)... or for an encounter with the silver coin.  Now, will Fiona's time at a summer camp become the stuff of horror movie legends?

THE LOWDOWN:  As I wrote in my review of The Silver Coin #1, I am a big fan of horror comic book anthologies.  That includes everything from the classic EC Comics titles to later titles like DC Comics' Ghosts and House of Mystery, Kitchen Sink Press's Death Rattle, and Approbation Comics' Amour, to name a few.

“Girls of Summer,” the offering in The Silver Coin #2, moves away from classic ghost and monster stories.  It reads like an urban legend about an unwary teen who strays too far from the safe confines and wanders into a dark corner of reality.  Writer Kelly Thompson offers in “Girls of Summer” a story that is like a blend of an episode of “The Twilight Zone” television series and twenty-first century gory horror movies.

I enjoyed the story, “The Ticket,” from the first issue of this series a little more than I do “Girls of Summer.”  This time, the arrival of the cursed silver coin feels a little like an insertion for the sake of the series' title.

However, Michael Walsh's art and graphical storytelling deliver an unsettling tale that captures the awfulness of Fiona's fellow campers and the severe isolation that Fiona feels.  Walsh splashes color like a madman, which revs up the intensity of the second half of “Girls of Summer.  Walsh will certainly make readers pay attention.

The Silver Coin #1 and #2 have made me … hungry for more.  And I still feel very confident in highly recommending this comic book series to you, dear readers.

I READS YOU RECOMMENDS:  Fans of classic horror comic book anthologies will want to spend The Silver Coin.

B+

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"


https://twitter.com/Mister_Walsh
https://michaelwalshcomics.com/
https://twitter.com/zdarsky
http://www.zdars.co/
https://twitter.com/JeffLemire
https://tinyletter.com/JeffLemire
https://twitter.com/edbrisson
http://www.edbrisson.com/
https://twitter.com/ImageComics
https://imagecomics.com/


The text is copyright © 2021 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog or site for reprint and syndication rights and fees.

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Monday, May 10, 2021

BOOM! Studios Shipping from Diamond Distributors for May 12, 2021

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