History Film / DarkPhoenix

As suggested by its title, ''Dark Phoenix'' is an adaptation of the iconic Creator/MarvelComics Franchise/XMen storyline by Creator/ChrisClaremont and Creator/JohnByrne, ''ComicBook/TheDarkPhoenixSaga'', which was previously integrated into 2006's ''Film/XMenTheLastStand'', stated to be more faithful than the latter film was. It is set in [[UsefulNotes/TheNineties 1992]], following the successive decade trend set by previous films ''[[Film/XMenFirstClass First Class]]'', ''[[Film/XMenDaysOfFuturePast Days of Future Past]]'' and ''[[Film/XMenApocalypse Apocalypse]]''.

* CruelAndUnusualDeath: During the train battle, Magneto tosses the remaining D'Bari, including Vuk's [[TheDragon Dragon]] Jones, into the next carriage - then uses his powers to crush it flat with them inside.

* TheDragon: "Jones" is the most prominent of the D’Bari under Vuk.

Creator/SophieTurner returns as ComicBook/JeanGrey from ''Apocalypse'' while Creator/JamesMcAvoy (Professor X), Creator/TyeSheridan (ComicBook/{{Cyclops}}), Creator/MichaelFassbender (ComicBook/{{Magneto}}), Creator/NicholasHoult (ComicBook/{{Beast|Marvel Comics}}), Creator/JenniferLawrence (ComicBook/{{Mystique}}), Creator/AlexandraShipp (ComicBook/{{Storm}}), Creator/EvanPeters (ComicBook/{{Quicksilver}}), and Creator/KodiSmitMcPhee (ComicBook/{{Nightcrawler}}) reprise their roles as well, while Creator/JessicaChastain joins the cast as Vuk, an alien antagonist with the ability to shapeshift.

* HollywoodOld: A strangely widespread version, because of the series' desire to set each new movie in a different decade, everyone is way older than you would expect them to be based on their actors younger appearance. The 28-year-old Nicholas Hoult and Jennifer Lawrence are playing the role of characters who are, chronologically, in their late 40s or early 50s. The 41-year-old Michael Fassbender is now playing a Magneto that's in his 60s. It's been pointed out that with the Creator/IanMcKellen version of Magneto canonically being a future version of this Magneto (as per Film/XMenDaysOfFuturePast), the movie implies that Michael Fassbender turns into Ian [=McKellen=] in 8 years, as Film/XMen takes place in 2000.

** Storm talks to Scott about believing someone is something they're actually not. By the time you realise the truth, it's too late. This is an obvious reference to her experiences with Apocalypse in the previous film.

* TookALevelInBadass: Cyclops, UpToEleven.

** In the background of one scene, a power-supplying company has ComicBook/{{Bishop}}'s name on it.

* KnifeNut: Magneto's lieutenant Selene carries two knives.

* SomethingCompletelyDifferent: The first ''X-Men'' movie to integrate cosmic aspects that were once off-limits to the series, such as aliens and Phoenix being a separate entity of its own. The film introduces the D'Bari, a race of shapeshifting aliens led by Vuk, as well as the Phoenix Force itself. For reference, the only time extraterrestrials were featured in the series was with Shatterstar in ''Film/Deadpool2'', just a year earlier, and as a mere gag no less.

* HeroAntagonist: Magneto, [[spoiler:Beast]], and the Brotherhood in this movie aren't actually evil this time around, but are deeply concerned about the threat of the Dark Phoenix and are willing to kill her to save the world. This is in contrast with the heroes, who still care about their friend and are hoping to stop her without killing her. [[spoiler:However, they do have a UnscrupulousHero stint to them, in that they're not particularly worried about the citizens that could get caught in the crossfire.]]
* HijackingCthulhu: Jean managing to survive absorbing the Phoenix Force counts as this. [[spoiler:Vuk's main goal seems to be the same, hoping to steal the Phoenix from Jean herself.]]

* HollywoodOld: A strangely widespread version, because of the series' desire to set each new movie in a different decade, everyone is way older than you'd expect them to be based on their actors. Then 28 year old Nicholas Hoult and Jennifer Lawrence are playing the role of characters who are, chronologically, in their late 40s or early 50s. Then 41 years old Michael Fassbender is now playing a Magneto that's in his 60s. It's been pointed out that with the Creator/IanMcKellen version of Magneto canonically being a future version of this Magneto (as per Film/XMenDaysOfFuturePast), the movie implies that Michael Fassbender turns into Ian [=McKellen=] in 8 years, as Film/XMen takes place in 2000.
* HotLine: Charles Xavier has a phone line allowing him to directly speak to the US President. Sadly, it gets cut off as soon as Jean's rampages begin, not even giving him the time to explain anything.

** Jean accidentally [[spoiler:does this to Raven]].

* InSpiteOfANail: Charles got future knowledge that helped him figure out he should teach Jean to embrace the Phoenix instead of caging it... And yet, the team ends up having to fight her anyway.
* ItAlwaysRainsAtFunerals: When [[spoiler:Mystique]] is killed in action, there's a rainy funeral shortly afterward. Notably, Storm is present, but chooses not to use her powers.
* JerkassHasAPoint: While the film makes clear that Charles' pushing the X-Men for the sake of his own ego is certainly nothing good, he's not wrong when he makes the point that the adulation he and the X-Men receive as heroes is preferable to the hatred and fear they usually receive.

* KarmaHoudini: [[spoiler:Beast, who had temporarily betrayed Professor X to try to kill Jean against his orders, endangering ordinary citizens in the process, is rewarded by becoming the Dean of Jean Grey's School of Gifted Youngsters in Xavier's absence. Likewise, there are no repercussions for Magneto putting people in danger, even though he had previously retired from that kind of life well before the events of this movie, while Charles also seems to avoid any major repercussions for his part in Jean's fall. However, since Beast, Magneto and Professor Xavier all helped defend the soldiers from the D’Bari, it’s possible that the President pardoned them all afterwards.]]

** In Vuk's first appearance, she kills Margaret's dog offscreen.

* MurderIsTheBestSolution: [[spoiler:Hank]] approaches Magneto in the aftermath of [[spoiler:Mystique's death]], knowing full well Erik will try to kill her as a result. In fairness, he's utterly distraught at the time, and has had it with Charles' self-serving justifications and insistence Jean can be saved.

* NeverTrustATitle: Despite being called Dark Phoenix [[spoiler:Jean never actually becomes a full on villain and the worst she does is ACCIDENTALLY kill Mystique. According to WordOfGod the movie was about an empowered woman taking control of her destiny.]]

** The marketing campaign in general was rather off. Selling it as a event movie and grand finale of the series with Jean as the antagonist when it was never designed to be that but more of a character-driven psychological thriller with Jean as the protagonist. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0sw9Y29GVY&list=PL4P2exRjRCFzVfdXDBXQqJxVI0h0tyXsQ&index=2&t=0s As this video throughly explains]].

** While the film makes clear later he was doing it with the best of intentions, blocking the knowledge of [[spoiler:her father's survival from Jean's mind leads her to go find him once the Phoenix force erodes said block, learning the truth about his blaming her for her mother's death]], leading her to be far more emotional and less willing to listen to Xavier once the X-Men show up - in turn leading to [[spoiler:Mystique's death]] when she loses control of her powers.
** He stops Beast from tasering Jean, hoping that Raven will talk her down (though admittedly there was no guarantee he'd be successful).
** It also gets several policemen killed, which sets human-mutant relations back significantly, severely tarnishes the X-Men's reputation and ruins the special relationship he'd fostered with the President.
** All that's bad enough, but later his total refusal to accept any responsibility for [[spoiler:the loss of Raven]] or even admit he'd done anything wrong (despite all of the above), end up driving away a despondent Hank and leading him to ally with Erik to kill Jean.

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:Mystique is dead, and Jean Grey's actions have significantly set Human-Mutant relations back after nearly two decades of progress. However, an alien invasion has been thwarted, the X-Men continue to exist alongside a non-extremist Brotherhood in Genosha, and Jean lives as a cosmic being.]]
* BookEnds: As a CallForward to the original movie's ending, [[spoiler:a scene of Xavier and Erik playing chess is what ends the film]].
* BrutalHonesty: [[spoiler:After Raven dies, Hank tells Charles point-blank that her death is his fault. He also calls him out for refusing to admit that he was wrong for messing with Jean's mind when she was a girl and says that the whole time they were protecting the kids from the world, they should've been protecting them from Charles.]]

** Storm talks to Scott about believing people are things they're actually not, and how by the time you realise the truth it's too late - an obvious reference to her experiences with Apocalypse in the previous film.

** The film opens with a voiceover of Jean begging the question on if we are destined to a fate we can’t control or if we can evolve into something more, which is the questions asked in the opening voiceover of X-Men: Days Of Future Past. According to Simon Kinberg this movie is connected to Days of Future Past and it’s ending, which showed that Jean’s fate changed from the original timeline.

* CharacterDevelopment: Jean Grey gets a extended character arc, which started in ''[[Film/XMenApocalypse X-Men: Apocalypse]]''. She started out as an hopeless girl that believes that she will never control her powers, will hurt people, and destroy the world. In this film Jean’s nightmare seemly becomes a reality as she becomes one with a world destroying force and loses control of her powers. Resulting in her hurting Scott, then finding out that she caused her mother’s death when her power first manifested, and then killing Mystique. It seems hopeless and she is just about to give into her destiny. [[spoiler:However, after seeing that Charles had hope in her and still does, she starts to have hope in herself which allows her to use her pain to empower herself take control of her powers and her destiny.]]
* ComicBookMoviesDontUseCodenames: The Phoenix Force is never identified by name; as such, Jean's "Phoenix" moniker comes from students who were impressed that she was able to seemingly come BackFromTheDead, rather than from the source of her powers.

** [[spoiler: Jean's godlike powers are significantly retconned to a different origin of the Phoenix. She expressly had the Phoenix in ''Apocalypse'' because that was how the titular villain was defeated. Apocalypse says as much, showing genuine awe for the first time in his life at the blazing bird. Here, Jean acquires the Phoenix Force for the first time. Possibly justified, because it seems that she had the Phoenix inside her all along, and she became even more powerful when absorbed the cosmic Force.]]
** [[spoiler: Magneto being on ''any'' terms with the US government other than shoot-on-sight is preconditioned on the climax of ''Apocalypse'' where he is credited with defeating Apocalypse. So the fight had to have happened. Otherwise the last anyone had seen of Magneto, he was on the lam for having killed one president, escaping prison and then attacking both the Paris peace talks and the White House.]]
** [[spoiler: While the X-Men are famous, the world itself shows few if any scars from a near, well, ''Apocalypse.'' The US government has little patience for mutants and turns on them after what would be a trivial incident compared to Apocalypse's attack. In the latter every human on Earth had their mind invaded, the USA and USSR had their main nuclear weapons thrown into space, cities were razed, many millions killed in Cairo alone and Earth had two godlike mutants destroying someone who claimed to be capital-G God. Did everyone just forget?]]

* DisneyDeath: Jean Grey dies during the space mission, but is revived by the Phoenix Force, which earns her the "Phoenix" nickname. [[spoiler:Later happens late into the film, in which she makes her HeroicSacrifice to kill Vuk, and yet the Phoenix bird appears in the sky, indicating that she survived. Her survival is further confirmed by the epilogue of ''Film/XMenDaysOfFuturePast''.]]

** [[spoiler: Jean's godlike powers are significantly retconned to a different origin of the Phoenix. She expressly had the Phoenix in ''Apocalypse'' because that was how the titular villain was defeated. Apocalypse says as much, showing genuine awe for the first time in his life at the blazing bird. Here, Jean acquires the Phoenix Force for the first time.]]

Creator/SophieTurner returns as ComicBook/JeanGrey from ''Apocalypse'' while Creator/JamesMcAvoy (Professor X), Creator/TyeSheridan (ComicBook/{{Cyclops}}), Creator/MichaelFassbender (ComicBook/{{Magneto}}), Creator/NicholasHoult (ComicBook/{{Beast|Marvel Comics}}), Creator/JenniferLawrence (ComicBook/{{Mystique}}), Creator/AlexandraShipp (ComicBook/{{Storm}}), Creator/EvanPeters (ComicBook/{{Quicksilver}}), and Kodi Smit-[=McPhee=] (ComicBook/{{Nightcrawler}}) reprise their roles as well, while Creator/JessicaChastain joins the cast as Vuk, an alien antagonist with the ability to shapeshift.

* EvilDetectingDog: When the D'Bari first arrive in Margaret Smith's garden, her golden retriever Luna smells the aliens' scents and barks, drawing her owner out to see them.

* TakeThat: In the third act, the Mutant Containment Unit appears to apprehend Mutants after deeming them a threat to the citizens of New York City. [[FunWithAcronyms In other words]], [[Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse the MCU]] [[RealitySubtext shows up to take the X-Men away]]. Given that the train sequence was a reshoot filmed well after Disney's plans to acquire Fox were well underway, it's hard to argue that this wasn't deliberate ([[https://www.cnet.com/news/x-men-dark-phoenix-director-talks-about-the-movies-mcu-easter-egg/ though Simon Kinberg]] insists that it the reference was also an AffectionateParody, noting that the MCU team up with the X-Men when they all fight against the D'Bari).[[invoked]]

** [[spoiler: While the X-Men are famous, the world itself shows few if any scars from a near, well, ''Apocalypse.'' The US government has little patience for mutants and turns on them after what would be an trivial incident compared to Apocalypse's attack. In the latter every human on Earth had their mind invaded, the USA and USSR had their main nuclear weapons thrown into space, cities were razed, many millions killed in Cairo alone and Earth had two godlike mutants destroying someone who claimed to be capital-G God. Did everyone just forget?]]

** [[spoiler: Jean's godlike powers are significantly retconned to a different origin of the Phoenix. She expressly had the Phoenix in ''Apocalypse'' because that was how the titular villain was defeated. Apocalypse says as much, showing genuine awe for the first time in his life at the blazing bird. Here, Jean acquires the Phoenix Force for the first time. spoiler]]

* HollywoodLaw: Magneto's right - the US military can't simply come into Genosha without permission. If it's in the US, they're forbidden to carry out police functions by the Posse Comitatus Act, plus they need a search warrant. Assuming it's not (though the land was "given to them by the US government", which makes it unclear) this would be a violation of their sovereignty that could be taken as an act of war.

* SlaveToPR: Over the past few years, public opinion on mutants are not as bad as they were over the last 20 years thanks to the action of the X-Men. While Xavier did risks his team into more and more dangerous missions to feed his ego, he is not wrong when he explains that all their actions can be undone on one bad day. Sure enough, after Jean loses control of her power, mutants are once again deemed dangerous with news of Mutant Internment Camps being setup to lock up those who are deemed dangerous and Xavier is no longer able to contact with the President.

* ImpromptuTracheotomy: [[spoiler:During the finale, one of the D’Bari is impaled through the throat by Nightcrawler with his tail]].

* ContinuitySnarl:
** It is unclear how much of ''Film/XMenApocalypse'' happened. Magneto, last seen in ''Film/DaysOfFuturePast'' having violently escaped from imprisonment for assasinating one President and attacking Washington DC to try to kill another, is in relatively good standing with the US government. This implies he was credited for defeating Apocalypse as shown in that film.
*** [[spoiler:Likewise, Jean's destruction outside her house is literally immaterial vs. the consequences of Apocalypse's short-lived war, yet seems to provoke the US government both cracking down on mutants immediately ''and'' going head-to-head with what have to be regarded as a few god-like beings at this point.]]
** The ending of ''Film/DaysOfFuturePast'', in which Charles remained the headmaster of his academy and Jean is shown alive and well and with her friends in the school, is supposedly contradicted by the ending of this film, where [[spoiler:Jean is presumed dead after pulling a HeroicSacrifice to stop Vuk, and Charles retired from his position as the headmaster due to his guilt for being partly responsible for Jean losing control and Raven’s death, leaving Hank in charge of the school - which is now renamed Jean Grey’s School for Gifted Youngsters. Though given that Phoenix is shown flying through the atmosphere in the ending, and that the epilogue of ''Days of Future Past'' took place decades after this movie, presumably both Jean Grey and Charles decide to return to the X-Men during the TimeSkip offscreen.]]