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Dark Phoenix
I saw Dark Phoenix with Husband today, and we both enjoyed it! It was much better than X3, which is not exactly a high bar to pass but an important one.
-I thought Sophia Turner did a fantastic job as Jean Grey, probably my favorite live action portrayal. Husband has actually watched Game of Thrones and thought she did a good job but also wasn't entirely able to separate her from Sansa Stark.
-I was supremely disappointed with how Peter was treated. He's my favorite character in these movies, but he's not a major character, so I wasn't expecting much. But he got injured in the first big fight and then wasn't seen again until the end of the movie where he have a background quip? Like, I get it--he's a deus ex machina with his powers, so something's gotta be done to keep him from zipping in and taking care of everything. But what they did was disappointing to me, especially because they completely dropped the Erik-Peter thread.
-I missed the time period vibe the other movies had. There was pretty much nothing in this movie that made me go, "Aw, yeah, this is totally the early 90s."
-Scott and Jean's relationship was cute though! Still sort of boring, but I did believe in their relationship.
-Kurt was also adorable. I would have liked more Kurt as a substitute for the lack of Peter.
-I had some thoughts on Charles's culpability in the movie's plot, which I hashed out with Husband a bit in the car, but my thoughts keep looping around, so we'll see if I can coherently put anything down.
--So Charles lied to Jean when she was eight and messed with her brain a bit because he thought he had to in order to help her. He never went back and told her the truth or un-messed with her brain once she had better support.
--Everyone in the movie seems to think Charles's actions when Jean was eight are then causing her to go all Dark Phoenix in the movie because the "solar flare" undid what Charles originally did and now she's found out the truth in the worst possible way.
--But the "solar flare" is in actuality a supremely powerful cosmic force that likes to destroy things and is possessing/affecting her.
--So I think if Jean hadn't been hit by the cosmic force, what Charles did would not have been known and she would have continued just fine. Maybe? The truth would have come out eventually because that's what the truth does, but I think the consequences of it would not have been as catastrophic--catastrophic to Jean most likely but not to the rest of the world necessarily. I'll maintain that in the short time frame of the movie, Jean would have been fine had it not been for the cosmic entity.
--On the other hand, the only reason she got hit by the cosmic entity was because Charles demanded that the team stay and rescue the last astronaut over Raven's protests.
--And I see the characters all denouncing what Charles did when Jean was eight as wrong but no one really mentions his decision causing her to get hit by the "solar flare." I don't know how much the other characters realize the changes in Jean are being influenced by something outside her control or if they all think this was just what would have inevitably happened when the truth of Charles's actions came to light.
--"Jean is hosting a cosmic entity of extreme emotions that is causing her to act out because it's very powerful and difficult to control" vs. "Jean got hit by a solar flare which undid what Charles had done and now these are the consequences."
--So I tend to feel Charles's culpability for the events of the movie comes from having Jean get hit by the "solar flare," not by what he did when she was eight.
--(As a slight aside: I don't necessarily think Charles was wrong to shield Jean when she first met him, but he absolutely should have told her the truth and undid the "scaffolding" he put in her mind sometime in the seventeen years she was under his care so that she could process what happened, make informed decisions about her life, and know what her actual powers were. I don't think it would have been an easy transition, but I do think it would have been possible and it was necessary.)
--So I agree with the characters in the movie that Charles is at fault, although I think for different reasons.
--With regards to the solar flare though, I don't know if Charles agreeing with Raven's assessment to abandon the one astronaut would have done much though he wouldn't be as obviously to blame for Jean absorbing the cosmic entity if he had agreed.
--I thought at one point Vuk said that the cosmic entity had been seeking someone like Jean, so my thought was that Jean was getting the Dark Phoenix energy no matter what anyone did or didn't do. Husband's thought was that if Jean hadn't been in space to absorb the cosmic entity, then it would have continued on to Earth and destroyed our planet like it had done to all the other worlds it had come across. Either way, hindsight makes Charles's command for them to save the last astronaut into something that...doesn't actually matter much because either the rest of the plot would most likely be the same or there wouldn't be any plot because everyone is now dead.
Not sure if that was entirely coherent, apologies if it wasn't.
(I cut for spoilers nearly always because I don't care about spoilers but that means I'm not always great at deciding what's a spoiler. And because I know other people do care lots, I prefer to err on the side of over-cutting. This policy also gives me the added bonus of not needing to think about what is or is not a spoiler, everything goes under the cut.)
-I thought Sophia Turner did a fantastic job as Jean Grey, probably my favorite live action portrayal. Husband has actually watched Game of Thrones and thought she did a good job but also wasn't entirely able to separate her from Sansa Stark.
-I was supremely disappointed with how Peter was treated. He's my favorite character in these movies, but he's not a major character, so I wasn't expecting much. But he got injured in the first big fight and then wasn't seen again until the end of the movie where he have a background quip? Like, I get it--he's a deus ex machina with his powers, so something's gotta be done to keep him from zipping in and taking care of everything. But what they did was disappointing to me, especially because they completely dropped the Erik-Peter thread.
-I missed the time period vibe the other movies had. There was pretty much nothing in this movie that made me go, "Aw, yeah, this is totally the early 90s."
-Scott and Jean's relationship was cute though! Still sort of boring, but I did believe in their relationship.
-Kurt was also adorable. I would have liked more Kurt as a substitute for the lack of Peter.
-I had some thoughts on Charles's culpability in the movie's plot, which I hashed out with Husband a bit in the car, but my thoughts keep looping around, so we'll see if I can coherently put anything down.
--So Charles lied to Jean when she was eight and messed with her brain a bit because he thought he had to in order to help her. He never went back and told her the truth or un-messed with her brain once she had better support.
--Everyone in the movie seems to think Charles's actions when Jean was eight are then causing her to go all Dark Phoenix in the movie because the "solar flare" undid what Charles originally did and now she's found out the truth in the worst possible way.
--But the "solar flare" is in actuality a supremely powerful cosmic force that likes to destroy things and is possessing/affecting her.
--So I think if Jean hadn't been hit by the cosmic force, what Charles did would not have been known and she would have continued just fine. Maybe? The truth would have come out eventually because that's what the truth does, but I think the consequences of it would not have been as catastrophic--catastrophic to Jean most likely but not to the rest of the world necessarily. I'll maintain that in the short time frame of the movie, Jean would have been fine had it not been for the cosmic entity.
--On the other hand, the only reason she got hit by the cosmic entity was because Charles demanded that the team stay and rescue the last astronaut over Raven's protests.
--And I see the characters all denouncing what Charles did when Jean was eight as wrong but no one really mentions his decision causing her to get hit by the "solar flare." I don't know how much the other characters realize the changes in Jean are being influenced by something outside her control or if they all think this was just what would have inevitably happened when the truth of Charles's actions came to light.
--"Jean is hosting a cosmic entity of extreme emotions that is causing her to act out because it's very powerful and difficult to control" vs. "Jean got hit by a solar flare which undid what Charles had done and now these are the consequences."
--So I tend to feel Charles's culpability for the events of the movie comes from having Jean get hit by the "solar flare," not by what he did when she was eight.
--(As a slight aside: I don't necessarily think Charles was wrong to shield Jean when she first met him, but he absolutely should have told her the truth and undid the "scaffolding" he put in her mind sometime in the seventeen years she was under his care so that she could process what happened, make informed decisions about her life, and know what her actual powers were. I don't think it would have been an easy transition, but I do think it would have been possible and it was necessary.)
--So I agree with the characters in the movie that Charles is at fault, although I think for different reasons.
--With regards to the solar flare though, I don't know if Charles agreeing with Raven's assessment to abandon the one astronaut would have done much though he wouldn't be as obviously to blame for Jean absorbing the cosmic entity if he had agreed.
--I thought at one point Vuk said that the cosmic entity had been seeking someone like Jean, so my thought was that Jean was getting the Dark Phoenix energy no matter what anyone did or didn't do. Husband's thought was that if Jean hadn't been in space to absorb the cosmic entity, then it would have continued on to Earth and destroyed our planet like it had done to all the other worlds it had come across. Either way, hindsight makes Charles's command for them to save the last astronaut into something that...doesn't actually matter much because either the rest of the plot would most likely be the same or there wouldn't be any plot because everyone is now dead.
Not sure if that was entirely coherent, apologies if it wasn't.
(I cut for spoilers nearly always because I don't care about spoilers but that means I'm not always great at deciding what's a spoiler. And because I know other people do care lots, I prefer to err on the side of over-cutting. This policy also gives me the added bonus of not needing to think about what is or is not a spoiler, everything goes under the cut.)