dark Phoenix- seen = critics pile on job? A very watchable movie?

Cafe Society
41

Um, huh? I mean, seriously, huh???

You a proposing that there is a vast conspiracy of reviewers who secretly share their views on movies for the express purpose of piling on movies.

And not all movies. Just certain ones.

There’s a lot of movies out there that have RT ratings in the 40-60% range. A lot. So those are clearly not examples of piling on. And which of the movies with 80%+ ratings are pile ons and which are just good movies???

Note that there are 40 top critics who reviewed Dark Phoenix listed at RT. 7 of them gave it a positive review. Why don’t these 7 “out” the other 33 as being in collusion? Were their reviews “plants” to throw people off? Note that if you check reviews for similar movies it’s not the same 7 each time on the minority side. So there’s no super secret anti-cabal either.

How does this super-secret cabal decide all this? Random lottery? How?

Were they psychic and picked this film because they knew you would be unhappy with their reviews?

This is really getting absurd.

Note there’s a spiral in conspiracy theories. Someone points out an objection. Come up with a new explanation. How about this other objection? Then there’s another new explanation. And on and on. If you keep having to keep coming up with explanations, you’re doomed.

Sometimes things are just what they are. No additional explanations needed.

There will always be differences between critics and viewers in bulk. Esp. the noisy viewers who make themselves heard online.

Get … used … to … it.

42

For those not in the know who so passionately argued it is NOT POSSIBLE for reviewers to know other reviews in advance, and even if they did, movie reviewing is such an honorable job, no one would ever let another review affect theirs!

For proof that theory is false, evidence A below from Rotten Tomatoes!

Men in Black International isn’t the abomination that many critics are making it out to be… The problem with the film is that it’s very lazy.
Jun 26, 2019 | Full Review…

Liam De Brùn
Film Ireland Magazine

It seems reveiwer Liam here was aware of others when he wrote this! How?
Anyone care to step up and explain away that?

43

Men In Black International was released on Jun 14. By the time De Brùn’s review was written all other reviews were public. Not all reviewers get to pre-screen movies, and not all reviewers see a movie just as it’s released. There’s nothing to explain here.

44

I’ll just point out that that review was posted on June 26th, nearly two full weeks after Men in Black International premiered in most of the world. I don’t know when it was released in Ireland, but it does seem like that reviewer did write his review well after the film had come out.

You are so looking for affirmation on your conspiracy theory. “Doesn’t EVER happen” is not the same as “Doesn’t regularly happen.”

:smack:

45

My comics geek and huge Jean Grey fan of a wife saw Dark Phoenix this weekend and said it was the worst movie she’s seen since Jupiter Ascending.

46

I don’t know about all this conspiracy theory stuff. I just know that I liked many of the previous X-Men movies, but found the immediately preceding one, “Apocalypse”, pretty risible. So when I saw how this one was received, I was ready to skip it. But then the writer-director manned up and gave an interview to KCRW’s The Business podcast, which most filmmakers don’t do after a flop. He insisted he still believed they had made a good movie, and he came across as a smart and sympathetic guy. So I decided to check it out on Blu-ray.

I thought it was really good! I have seen all the X-Men movies, and if we don’t count Deadpool, this is tied (grade of A-) with “Days of Future Past” as my second favorite after X2 (the only one I give a full A grade to). All the others are B+ at best (more like D+ for “Apocalypse”), even the IMO highly overrated “Logan” (B-). JMO of course, but if you like this franchise at all, I don’t see the problem.

47

It’s amazing to me how good Jennifer Lawrence can be in films like Winter’s Bone and American Hustle and be so terrible in the X-Men and Hunger Games franchises. So seeing her die here was actually a pleasant welcome and one that did not inspire much sorrow or poignancy.

That said, from what I vaguely remember from the summer, this one had a well-done action setpiece on a train and it was certainly better than Apocalypse and at least one of the stand-alone Wolverine films (always get them mixed up). So I thought it was Ok (shrug) and definitely not conspicuously worse than some of the previous installments.

48

(Missed this first time around.)

It’s A Wonderful Life IS a horrible sack of shit. Complete and total garbage of a movie.

49

I wouldn’t go that far, but AWL is definitely overrated. Casablanca too.

50

This is true of every X men movie made. There’s four main players and 30 odd people who appear, do their turn, and disappear for the rest of the movie. It’s the formula. Complaining that it’s an X men movie which does this means it’s your first X men movie.

51

No, it really doesn’t. I’ve seen all of the X-Men movies (including the Wolverine movies).

X-Men (2000) actually takes some screen time to establish Wolverine as the main character. Rogue also gets a significant amount of screen time establishing her character. We see a conversation between Professor X and Magneto establishing their conflicting views on mutant-human relations. Even most of the relatively minor characters at least get some sort of introduction, indicating who they are and what they can do.

Famke Janssen’s Jean Grey get gets significantly more dialogue and screen time in X-Men establishing her character and her relationships with the other characters than Sophie Turner’s Jean Grey gets in Dark Phoenix, and she’s a supporting character in the first and nominally the main character in the second.

It’s not that minor background characters with two minutes of screen time just show up and disappear. It’s that major characters, including the nominal main character, just show up and never actually get established as, you know, characters.

Look, I didn’t like Dark Phoenix. You may have. It’s ok that we have different tastes and preferences in movies. But the reason I didn’t like Dark Phoenix isn’t that I don’t like X-Men movies or super hero movies or big dumb action movies or that I’m not familiar with them or their tropes. I’m familiar with them and I like them - when they’re well executed. I just thought Dark Phoenix was terribly executed.

52

Rise, old thread.

Finally saw this movie. I’m in the meh camp. At the moment, it’s 5.7 on IMDB and I can agree with that. It was watchable but not good.

I agree the alient bad guys got no motivation or depth. Something to unite the two sides of mutants.

The characters opinions changed so fast in this movie. Humans like mutants and then on a dime don’t. Raven is not going to endanger the crew but then still does as she’s told. It would have worked better if she wasn’t in the ship and instead arguing with Charles in the control room. Magneto tells Jean he didn’t get any real satisfaction from killing the people. Then decides to again get vengeance for Raven, after just saying he learned vengeance didn’t do anything. Then stopped again. The whole movie seems wrapped around Xavier but the perception of him shifts, even if his ideas don’t. Raven and Hank have great points against what Xavier did that are never really dealt with. Instead of realizing or asking for another way to handle things, it seems as if they validate what he had done.

Maybe the armed forces would send in a group to deal with Magneto that way but why? Why send in metal at all? Why be so confrontational? They could have had non metal weapons but then did they know what other mutants were there? Why not send in the ones that negated powers? Again, don’t show something that can be used as a solution in the world, or the same movie, then never use it again.

I think what made this movie poor for me is that there is too much telling and not enough showing. What did the aliens lose? Why bother killing humans? What was the energy? I mean, yes, phoenix force, but is that ever said? Did Charles modify her memories or just wall them up? How many has he done that to?

Side Note: I have never understood the idea of ignoring a problem so it goes away or not training on an ability someone has. It’s better to know it, understand it, and control it as best as possible, rather than it coming out uncontrolled later.

I definitely don’t understand why they show all of the xmen/mutants, let them have their one or two moments, then leave them. Anytime you spread out the cast, you lose time to develop character that drive the story. I’m not saying they couldn’t have them in background, going on their own missions, doing things, but focus on the characters needed for a given story. I mean, did Quicksilver get smacked down and then run away for the rest of movie? Usually, we see growth, getting faster, or wanting to prove they can do something. Instead, he’s just gone the rest of the movie?

Overall, the franchise at 20th CF felt like they had some ideas for this telling of the x-men, from the 60s going forward. It started strong but then wasted its potential. I almost thought this was going to show how Xavier was as arrogant as ever and then Jean’s death would bring him low so he could learn. He didn’t learn anything. Magneto didn’t learn anything. Really, as I think about it, I’m not sure what, if any character growth happened in this movie.