X-Men: Dark Phoenix’s impossible task of doing the comic book justice
- Squeezing in the entire Phoenix story arc, including the preceding saga in which she becomes Earth’s greatest hero, is incredibly difficult in a single film
- The best adaptation of The Dark Phoenix Saga is still the one done by the ’90s cartoon X-Men: The Animated Series
“Hear me, X-Men! No longer am I the woman you knew! I am fire! And life incarnate! Now and forever I am Phoenix!”
These are the words Jean Grey says when she first bursts onto the page as Phoenix in X-Men No. 101 (1976) after sacrificing herself to pilot a spaceship through cosmic radiation to get her friends safely back to Earth.
She makes the same declaration on the last page of X-Men No. 134 (1980) when she rises as Dark Phoenix soon before destroying the aircraft she and her friends were aboard.
A story that spans that many comic book issues is nearly impossible to tell in a single movie, but that has not stopped Hollywood from trying … twice. The latest effort is Dark Phoenix, which hit cinemas last week and promptly scored the lowest opening weekend gross in X-Men franchise history.
While this adaptation features more elements from the comics than 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand, neither did the original story justice.