One of the many signs that a movie is in trouble is when I am saying the lines of dialog before the character utter them. That usually indicates that the writers have taken the first and blatantly obvious choices in constructing their scenes. Throughout Dark PhoenixI predicted the characters’ dialog many times word for word.

The fourth installment in the re-booted X-Menfranchise Dark Phoenix  is the second attempt to adapt an iconic storyline from the source material onto the silver screen and while it is not the garbage fire that the most recent entry in the series was this movie managed to provoke big action boredom. Set in 1995 with an utter disregard to all of the characters’ ages, remember that the re-boot of this series started in 1962 by mixing mutants into the Cuban Missile Crisis and now thirty-three years have passed and none of the characters have appropriately aged, the X-men are now beloved by the world as heroes and saviors. Jean Grey, seen briefly in the previous installment, participates in rescue of a NASA shuttle crew and become empowered with a strange cosmic force.  Wielding her newly enhanced abilities Jean, for *reasons* (I’m sarcastic there nothing in the film is properly motivated.) engages in destructive behavior, assaults local police that responded to an unauthorized jet landing, and is then on the run from her friends and the law, all while being pursued by malevolent aliens who want her cosmic powers but are also somehow unable to possess them.

Of this film’s many great failings is the lack of a central story or even consistent theme. There are the bones and threads of an emotional and impactful story here about hubris, lies, and what happens when we start to believe our own press releases, but none of that is developed with any skill or tact. Characters speak in the plainest fashion, always revealing inner thoughts that most people obscure or in an overly expository explaining to each other what they already know. Things that might have been emotional reveals if held back as secrets as revealed in a straightforward linear fashion, draining later scenes of stakes and meaning. Characters are forced into the plot because the actors are under contract not because they belong in this story, yes I am looking at you Magneto, and set-piece battles happen because they are expected to happen at this act break.

Over all this film was dull, plodding, and wasted the talents of many fine actors, not worth your time at any price.