After numerous delays and false starts, the marketing for X-Men: Dark Phoenix is finally beginning to ramp up, and not a moment too soon.
Providing it stays true to Chris Claremont’s titular comic – and it appears that it will – the film will follow Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) as she encounters the famous Phoenix Force, which ends in a radical transformation for the all-powerful mutant. Those same alterations are enough to place her fellow X-Men – namely Professor X (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender) on red alert, and now, we finally have a proper look at how all this is set to play out.
Yes, at long last, Fox has released the first trailer for Dark Phoenix and while the push to make it more dramatic than the unintentionally campy Apocalypse is no doubt a good move, we can’t help but to feel a bit underwhelmed by the footage here. I mean, in a year that’s also going to bring us Avengers 4, Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman 1984, to name just three, the latest installment in the X-Men franchise is going to need to do A LOT to catch moviegoers’ attention. And though this preview does have its moments – and again, it looks like a big improvement on Apocalypse – we still can’t imagine it doing very much to ease the general feeling of worry surrounding the pic.
Frankly, it’s been a long, troubled road to theaters for Dark Phoenix, with the film being plagued by more negative buzz and concerning reports than we can count along the way. At this point, it seems as if Fox has all but written it off, and while we won’t pass final judgement based on one trailer alone – and the first one, no less – we can’t say that what we’ve seen here makes us want to run out to theaters on opening night to catch the movie.
Starring Jennifer Lawrence (Mystique), Michael Fassbender (Magneto), James McAvoy (Professor X), Nicholas Hoult (Beast), Alexandra Shipp (Storm) and Kodi Smit-McPhee (Nightcrawler), among others, and aiming to “revolutionize” the superhero genre as we know it, X-Men: Dark Phoenix will be with us on February 14th, and we can only hope that it ends up being a lot more exciting that what we just watched.