Dark Phoenix (2019)

What I've never quite understood is, it was quite evident from Apocalypse that they'd miscast Turner as Jean Grey. So why would they then follow that up with a film that centres around her character? It seemed doomed from the moment it was announced.
 
satchef1 said:
What I've never quite understood is, it was quite evident from Apocalypse that they'd miscast Turner as Jean Grey. So why would they then follow that up with a film that centres around her character? It seemed doomed from the moment it was announced.
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Probably because Fox needed another X men film to retain the rights, knew that Dark Phoenix was a big story line and had a rough script for it, and couldn't go and change major cast members (again) without rebooting it (again) so didn't have time.

Given the source materials and story lines they had to work with Fox have done abysmally with the Xmen films, they did an Apocalypse that was far to short and mediocre, Phoenix looks like it's going to be bad, and the less said about some of the other films the better (although Logan was very good, but The Wolverine urgh).
I think part of the problem is/was that Fox didn't seem to have people who were both creative AND fans with a good knowledge of the characters making a lot of the decisions, instead they seemed to have had a lot of the key decisions being made by the usual studio execs who didn't have a clue about background of the characters and lore and were making changes as if it was entirely new/in house IP, whilst at the same time there was no coherency even within the company in terms of the franchise so no real plan for the next film most of the time.

Fox could have been making an utter mint on the rights they had*, but instead they've been doing a DC with no coherent ongoing plans for the franchises and wasting major long running stories from the comics in rushed single movie story lines.
My brother in law was really excited at the prospect of the Apocalypse storyline being on film as it was vast, but Fox turned it into just two hours of film with most of the actual story removed, he's not excited by Phoenix.


*They had the rights to both of the primary Marvel teams, and most of it's best known characters, yet Marvel made a fortune using their second/third/forth tier characters that a lot of people only knew vaguely if at all, simply because they were telling better stories with them in the films and making better use of their existing comic book stories.
 
Werewolf said:
Probably because Fox needed another X men film to retain the rights, knew that Dark Phoenix was a big story line and had a rough script for it, and couldn't go and change major cast members (again) without rebooting it (again) so didn't have time.
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I guess that even though Disney now own Fox so technically the rights aren't an issue, that the money spent on what they had before the merger was worth them continuing to try and at least make some money back instead of scrapping the project entirely which to most would seem preferable than experiencing another train wreck of what is potentially (in comics at least) a better franchise than the Avengers
 
Werewolf said:
*They had the rights to both of the primary Marvel teams, and most of it's best known characters, yet Marvel made a fortune using their second/third/forth tier characters that a lot of people only knew vaguely if at all, simply because they were telling better stories with them in the films and making better use of their existing comic book stories.
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That's always been the difference. Marvel understands and respects their characters and iconic stories, and built them worthy movies.

Everything else is licenced out to a movie studio who just wants to make money, and people who are happy to re-write the character and background to suit whatever they fancy. They want to put their own stamp on it and not do someone else's work, in the hope that it gets them up the ladder in Hollywood.

Look at the abortion they made out of the last Fantastic Four as they repurposed Chronicle 2, just so they could hang onto the licence a bit longer. Look at how Garfield's Spiderman 3 was cancelled because a studio exec felt slighted. How a love story was shoehorned into Deadpool because the studio said is was needed for the female demographic. It seems like making a good movie is the last thing on their minds.

This is the same reason that the DC movies can't catch a break. Studios can't resist messing with the source material, because they always think they know better.
 
Now Disney own Fox you can be fairly sure that the X-men rights will probably be reverting to the Marvel studios and they'll sort it out properly,

I wouldn't be surprised if they do reboot the X-men, or at least get the next film done by a team worked out with the MCU team and make some real money (it wouldn't take too many Avengers scale films for Disney to recoup their money entirely).

I think part of the issue is that that Fox started filming DP before the sale to Disney was on the books and most of the money was spent on it before it was finalised (they wouldn't drop it until there was no chance of the sale falling through).

Basically I think Fox has made a lot of the Marvel films they did, not because they wanted to, or had any real intention of making good films, but simply to hold onto the rights* and if possible break even in the hope that at some point Disney would offer them silly money to get the rights back.


*From what I understand the rights deals Fox and Sony had were both basically "as long as you release a film every X years you can renew the rights under the same conditions and same price as before", Sony worked out it was smarter to let Marvel basically take over making Spiderman films but with them funding and distributing them, whist Fox just flailed about.
 
Werewolf said:
*From what I understand the rights deals Fox and Sony had were both basically "as long as you release a film every X years you can renew the rights under the same conditions and same price as before", Sony worked out it was smarter to let Marvel basically take over making Spiderman films but with them funding and distributing them, whist Fox just flailed about.
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That's correct. A new film every couple of years, IIRC.

One thing movie studios never, ever want to let go of is IP rights. Even if it just sits around for years unused, they can always fire it up as a reboot or a remake, can always use it to sue someone else, can deny the IP to anyone else, can use it for merchandising. Even if they sell it on or licence it out at some point, it's still got value to them (look at what Sony and Fox are getting in order for Marvel/Disney to get those IP rights back).

I'm sure someone at Disney is looking at the X-Men IP and thinking "there's another dozen plus Avengers sized movies right there".
 
I suspect someone at Disney looked at that when they were working out how much to pay for Fox ;)
IIRC they've already made something like 5-10x their investment back on Marvel, and Fox has a far bigger catalogue of films and IP but I suspect Disney were wiling to pay a few billion* just for the X-men/FF and the characters that were locked up by the old fox deal.



*Even if new films with the X-men characters only make 500million each it soon adds up, and that's at the very low end of the scale for the Marvel films.
 
satchef1 said:
What I've never quite understood is, it was quite evident from Apocalypse that they'd miscast Turner as Jean Grey. So why would they then follow that up with a film that centres around her character? It seemed doomed from the moment it was announced.
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Not just the focusing of a film on a character played by Turner, but also that the writer and director is Simon Kinberg. He already failed to do Jean's story any justice in The Last Stand, which he also wrote. So you've got an actor in the lead role with the acting range of a brick and a director whose only previous directing experience was one episode of The Twilight Zone....

I think Werewolf is correct; Fox just wanted to get a film out to keep hold of the rights; otherwise, if they had any clue or cared about the quality of the output, they would at least have hired a competent director. As it turns out, even Bryan Singer is more competent than Kinberg and Apocalypse sucked...

Dark Phoenix has parallels with The Mummy (2017), as both films were directed by someone who had been a writer and producer but had very little to no directing experience. Fox just wanted to get a film out; Universal though, no idea what they were doing allowing Alex Kurtzman to direct The Mummy. I heard reports that Tom Cruise was instructing him on how to direct. No surprise that was a pile of **** and no surprise that Dark Phoenix looks to be as well.

Marvel make most of the other studios look pretty clueless to be honest. They do get some criticism from some people, but at least they know what they are doing and have a system that works. Sony, Fox, Warner Bros just seem to throw **** around and wait to see if it sticks...
 
Marsman said:
Marvel make most of the other studios look pretty clueless to be honest. They do get some criticism from some people, but at least they know what they are doing and have a system that works. Sony, Fox, Warner Bros just seem to throw **** around and wait to see if it sticks...
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Can you imagine what an epic time it would be in cinema history if those studios could all output films with "Marvel" levels of quality! Instead we're left with a really negative impression from most "mainstream" cinema with only a few actual hits from the few mainsteam non-Marvel films per year now. I mean with the IP these studios have from things like the DCEU, X-Men etc they should all be smashing box office records one after another but the dirge that we've currently got is just mind-blowing!
 
Too many top brass (people in suits) interfering all the time is the issue. Hate them all for messing up so many films and film franchises. WB worst of all; They own their stuff but they still fluff it up. All because of wanting a little more padding for their wallets. :mad:
 
Well that was just god awful. I mean they literally must have looked at the last Stand and gone "you know what, we can do an even worse version of that".

Just throw New Mutants out there as a TV special and get on with the MCU versions.
 
I cant believe how much this new era of xmen films have tanked, the first one was brilliant and then they just went back to doing dumb bs.

I also cant believe how terrible they make the xmen on film seem compared to the comics. Maybe it's just a FOX thing, but boy xmen are supposed to be absolutely kickass that go around fighting anything they dont agree with (including the avengers at one point) and somehow they took the source material and made them all depressed low rent superheroes. The actual ****.
 
Did not get to watch it yet as member of family fell ill and had to watch over them.

But I'm not liking what I'm reading about production. With scenes apparently being made on the fly, rewritten on the fly, and direction made overnight. No wonder all the negative responses.

Bah, Kinberg should be prevented from touching another franchise every again.
 
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