revere-7

This movie starts out as your standard dumb "Mall Cop" cliche. Painfully unfunny, and predictable. About halfway through they seemed to notice that was going nowhere and switched gears to try to be an edgy black comedy. But it pretty much fails at that too. The transition point between the two happens about halfway through when our protagonist decides to become a real cop, only to fail the psych exam (he has bipolar disorder- isn't that hilarious!); the beleaguered real police plan to make fun of him by delivering his failure notice when one officer peaces/out saying " I thought it was going to be funny, but it's just kind of sad," which perfectly describes the entire pathetic affair.

You're a marketing company that sold people on a what you knew was a lie. What do you do? Spin, of course! Make your own documentary about what happened and who was *really* to blame.

At first glance (and for the unwary) this documentary seems like one set to analyze what went wrong with the disastrous Fyre Festival; however while it does recount the events, it puts all the blame on the CEO of Fyre, while ignoring the marketing company that spun up the fantasy festival... because the film was - you guessed it - made by that very marketing company. Which is not to say that the Fyre CEO doesn't belong in prison (he most definitely does), but what he did he couldn't have done alone.

Judged completely on it's own merits, as if no other X-men movies (or comics) ever existed... it's still pretty lackluster. But the film doesn't exist in a vacuum, it's clearly part of a series... a series it seems to care nothing about.

So much not to like here. Sophie Turner is not at all appealing as Jean Grey (the X-Man who was so beautiful, charming, and charismatic that Cyclops, Havok, Beast, Wolverine, and even Professor X all had a crush on her at one time or another). But she's not alone in that. As a matter of fact, nearly all the X-Men seem to be lacking personality. On top of that every mutant in this is ridiculously overpowered, yet still somehow easily taken out by nameless grunts. It's like the writers weren't even familiar with the characters or their powers.

But the bad doesn't end there, oh no. The film completely messes with the timeline and established characters, not only is it inconsistent with the comics, and the earlier X-Men films, it's not even consistent with it's own quasi-rebooted storyline. And speaking of story, the film craps all over the cosmic magnum-opus of the X-Men comic series, completely leaving out key elements like the Shi'ar - and you know the destruction of an entire star system that kind of IS what the Dark Phoenix saga is all about. Instead the whole thing plays out in a suburb of New York like a low-budget generic superhero story about good vs. Evil. Even the special effects aren't so special. Like, for example, the Phoenix force itself, which is super impressive giant yellow firebird in the comics, yet here is mostly just a magenta (why?) plasma swirl.

If you don't know or care about these characters, the comics, or any of the other films in the series, yeah, it could still be enjoyable, but realistically how many people are in that boat and still interested in seeing this film? The whole thing is extra sad given that 20 years ago the X-Men films were the gold standard and kicked off the era of the modern superhero movie. As much as I absolutely hate reboots, this is one comic series that desperately needs it.

I'd give it about a 5 out of 10 for general audiences who don't care about the story, like a grade C film for the average movie goer, but surely a grade F for X-men fans.