I really wanted to like the final outing of Fox's run with the core X-Men franchise, but this film is pretty bad. It had a choice of running with Claremont & Byrne's seduction of absolute power theme, or Byrne's own later retcon of Jean being taken over by a cosmic being called the Phoenix, and writer/director Simon Kinberg fudges the issue by going for both and doing neither of them well. The entire film is clumsy, with repetitive dialogue (why does Tye Sheridan's Scott Summers have to whine at Jean so many times to see if she's 'ok'?) through to no coherent villain. Jean isn't really the villain of course (even though she does commit murder), it's Jessica Chastain's Vuk (of the alien D'Bari race), but seeing as this Dark Phoenix wasn't responsible for destroying her solar system her motivation is about as coherent as anyone's in the similarly weak Spider-Man 3 (Tobey Maguire's run). There are problems with acting, directing and writing - the worst problem being the number of mind numbing action pieces which don't move the narrative forward in any way. Sophie Turner, Tye Sheridan, Kodi Smit-McPhee and others aren't anywhere near strong enough actors to overcome a weak script, actors who are (Alexandra Shipp I'm looking at you) are sidelined, and the only First Class X-Man who seems to be making much of an effort is Nicholas Hoult as Hank McCoy. Narrative-wise though the film can't get over its central two problems: we only know most of these younger characters from X-Men: Apocalypse, and neither Bryan Singer nor his successor Kinberg here have given us reasons to invest in them. We also don't have much of a story to underpin Jean's downfall that's not heavily expositional - the 'mental barriers' Xavier put up in her youth breaking down as a result of absorbing the Phoenix Force may look good on a four colour page, but it's inadequate here. Jean killing Mystique would have been more dramatic a plot point if it hadn't been included in a trailer and Jennifer Lawrence hadn't phoned in her performance. Maybe they should have used Mastermind - Jean's moral compass breakdown doesn't come across on screen and it needs to. I'd say it was fun but even the action set pieces were dull, in particular the train battle in the final act. Where Jean realised she had to kill herself in the book to save the universe from the inevitability of her insanity, here she just gives herself over to the Phoenix Force, kills Vuk and seems to dissipate; no one seems terribly bothered, and there certainly isn't any character change in anyone as a result. It could all have been much better, but without any social/sexual orientation subtext it's just characters being moved around a screen for no real reason, and delivered without any heart at all. At least now it's time for Kevin Feige to get his hands on these characters, and I hope he fulfills his promise to wait to make sure he gets it right.