Excelsi-bore! My World of Flops Case File #129/My Year of Flops II #26 Dark Phoenix
Usually when a movie flops big time, the people involved often make a big show of pretending that it did not fail as spectacularly, and as publicly, and as incontrovertibly as it clearly did. They’ll say that the jury is still out and that there’s still plenty of time for people to find the movie and embrace it. Or they’ll cling to the idea, delusional or not, that while not many people might have seen the movie, the ones that did really loved it, with the kind of passion that can turn flops into word-of-mouth sleepers. Alternately, they’ll blame critics for poisoning audiences against their films.
Sometimes, however, a movie will be such a huge, notorious flop that its cast and crew and the studio bleeding money because of its unfortunate existence have no choice but to publicly acknowledge that, for all their hopes and dreams, the universe had unmistakably rejected their vision, and rejected it forcefully.
That happened with recent My World of Flops subject Serenity, when the distributor publicly acknowledged that while they really thought the movie was not terrible, honestly they didn’t, critics and focus group respondents felt strongly otherwise so there was no use throwing good money after bad where this turkey, I mean, misunderstood sleeper, was concerned.
On a similar note, when Dark Phoenix shocked no one with a staggeringly unimpressive first week box office haul the film’s writer, director and producer, Simon Kinberg, took public responsibility for the film’s staggering failure while producer-in-name only Lauren Schuler-Donner tweeted, then deleted, “Save your condolences. I had zero, nothing to do with Dark Phoenix. Or Apocalypse. Or New Mutants.”
That is what the young people call “shade” or a “sick burn” or “distancing yourself publicly from a very unsuccessful movie for the sake of your career” while Fox took an even bolder stance by stating that every single person involved with green-lighting Dark Phoenix was high on legal California marijuana at the time, and has not only been fired but blackballed from the industry.
Dark Phoenix was supposed to end this cycle of X-Men movies, which began in a pre-Iron Man, pre-MCU world with 2000’s X-Men, on a triumphant note that would build on everything that came before it, the way Avengers: Endgame paid off the twenty-one films that preceded it in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Instead, the blockbuster sequels functioned as the Goofus and Gallant of superhero team-up series-enders. Marvel beamed with pride over its three-hour-plus pop culture event, challenging an impressed and obsessed world, “Gaze in child-like awe and wonder at the magnificent conclusion of the greatest overlapping narrative in human history! Throw your money at our God-like creation! We are the champions of the box office! All others must prostrate themselves before us!”
Fox, in sharp contrast, adjusted its tie nervously, Rodney Dangerfield-style, and stammered to an underwhelmed and an unimpressed public, “Don’t mind us, we’re just finishing out our little story with a movie that, honestly, you do NOT have to pay attention to, especially its box-office. And the reviews. And the public response. Just kind of pretend Dark Phoenix, or whatever we’re calling it, doesn’t exist, and hey, who do you think will be the next Wolverine, huh? And what about Logan, that was good, right?”
Dark Phoenix’s failure would look terrible regardless of the context. Being released around the same time as a similar superhero opus with a good shot at becoming the top-grossing film in history makes the movie’s failure seem much worse.
Dark Phoenix made a lot of big mistakes, beginning with loosely adapting “The Dark Phoenix Saga”, a revered comic book arc that was previously the inspiration for Brett Ratner’s 2006 X-Men: The Last Stand, a previous nadir for the franchise. Considering the scathing public and critical response to X-Men: The Last Stand, and its reputation as the worst X-Men movie, it’s perplexing that Dark Phoenix also brings back X-Men: The Last Stand screenwriter Simon Kinberg.
By all accounts, Fox wanted to right the ship after the critical and commercial under-performance of 2017’s X-Men: Apocalypse, which Kinberg wrote and produced as well. But trying to correct the mistakes of X-Men: The Last Stand and X-Men: Apocalypse by hiring those films’ scribe to write and produce and direct a new take on the Dark Phoenix saga is like trying to atone for The Phantom Menace by making Jar Jar Binks the hero of a follow-up: deeply counter-productive and counter-intuitive.
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