Review: X-Men, Dark Phoenix (Blu-ray)

X-Men Dark Phoenix Review

During a rescue mission in space, Jean is nearly killed when she is hit by a mysterious cosmic force. Once she returns home, this force not only makes her infinitely more powerful, but far more unstable. Wrestling with this entity inside her, Jean unleashes her powers in ways she can neither comprehend nor contain. With Jean spiraling out of control, and hurting the ones she loves most, she begins to unravel the very fabric that holds the X-Men together. Now, with this family falling apart, they must find a way to unite — not only to save Jean’s soul, but to save our very planet from aliens who wish to weaponize this force and rule the galaxy.

Plot: Jean Grey begins to develop incredible powers that corrupt and turn her into a Dark Phoenix. Now the X-Men will have to decide if the life of a team member is worth more than all of humanity.

Director:  Simon Kinberg

Aspect Ratio: 2.35.1

Runtime: 113 min

Rotten Tomatoes Consensus: Dark Phoenix ends an era of the X-Men franchise by taking a second stab at adapting a classic comics arc — with deeply disappointing results.

Online Ratings:

  1. Rotten Tomatoes 23% (Audience 64%)
  2. IMDB 5.9
  3. Metacritic 43

“It’s the end of an era… literally.”

Review:

This movie was shot in shot in 2.8k & 3.4k with Arri Alexa XT Plus cameras and ultimately given a 2k Digital Intermediate — so you will get an upscaled image on this disc. Lastly for the specs, it was also given a HDR color grade for your viewing pleasure in HDR10+

Sorry 4K UHD lovers, as you noticed we received a Blu-ray for this review, so I don’t know how good the 4K UHD is personally. Let’s talk about the potential areas a 4K UHD disc could shine. Quickly you could ready for Jean absorbing the giant blast in Chapter 4, neon flares at the party in Chapter 6, Storm’s lightning in Chapter 21 and lastly in Chapter 23 when Vuk (Jessica Chastain) and Jean Grey are in the sky. There is also potential in the various close-up shots and textures on the X-Men’s outfits — plus the effects on Jean and Mystique’s skin. From there, you know the drill on what UHD brings to the table everywhere else.

Beyond all of that, this Blu-ray disc hits all the right marks for a standard 1080p release. So what about the 4K? I can confirm that the 4K UHD disc is getting mixed reviews from others… so there’s confusion. I’m assuming there has to be a decent bump in quality and while the HDR may or may not be amazing, there should be some spots where it does its job. Right? I will try and get my hands on a UHD disc so I can confirm or deny these mixed reviews. I need to know!

For reference of past mixed reviews, there’ve been great discs that only have minor bumps in quality, but they really hit a home run in the HDR department. With nice sharp details in close-up’s, solid black levels, contrast and the finer details like textures and depth, you don’t need a razor sharp image start to finish to get a great disc. I really hope the UHD will have something to battle the bad press and performance at the box office… but I can’t confirm anything yet.

Some of you may not like my take, but I saw this in theater when it released back in June and again, for the second time, last night with the home video release. My thoughts about it still stay the same: this movie isn’t as bad as people are making it out to be. Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t a great movie — but I do believe we live in a culture that can’t have something in the middle, especially inside a franchise. X-Men: Dark Phoenix had a lot of negative attention around it months before it’s theatrical run including news of re-shoots, problems on set and the big umbrella of an acquisition from Disney.

In the end, you have a movie in a franchise beloved by fans that didn’t live up to its predetermined rating — which in our culture, means it gets thrown away in an instant. All the drama around it didn’t help and I can’t help but wonder what this film would have done if it had released before Captain Marvel and the Disney acquisition… I guess we will never know.

We’re halfway through September which means that Black Friday is less than 3 months away aka you’ll probably be able to buy this at half the price in just a few months. The 4K UHD + Blu-ray 3D + Blu-ray + DVD releases on September 17th. If you have some interest, I would still recommend that you pick this up, just not at the Day 1 price, wait for a sale to jump in. Beyond that, if you’re a fan of X-Men movies in general — you’re going to buy it one way or another. Let me know in the comments.

Unfortunately, after everything, X-Men: Dark Phoenix will go into the category of the perfect popcorn or Sunday night movie that will be playing on TNT, TBS or FX that you’ll watch as you fall asleep.

Cheers,

Matt.

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X-Men Dark Phoenix Review