We love the early X-Men films and somehow our appreciation to it goes down every time we watch the newer movies (except for Logan) and this one took us to the lowest of the lows.
Even with a superb cast thrown herein, they couldn't have possibly resurrect the story. Caught between the merging of the Disney owned MCU and 20th Century Fox, this movie somehow lost it's way. We all know that the split in the characters has been with us with Marvel selling some its characters to 20th Century Fox. Without the MCU, we were happy seeing the X-Men and Spiderman movies only to find it as rubbish when MCU came along and introduced the very first Iron Man. There is a whole new world of story telling and 20th Century Fox was left in the dust. Everything went downhill from hereon.
Going back to this movie, the first scene was set in 1975 with the young Jean Grey was travelling with her parents and got into a car accident leaving her as an orphan. It was during this time that Professor Xavier brought her to his school. Fast forward to 1992, the X-Men were asked to rescue the astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavor. In the process of the rescue, Jean Grey was struck by a solar flare like energy, which she absorbs. This energy multiplied her powers and unsuspectingly unlocks the memories which were repressed by Professor Xavier. The professor blocked the memories for her to be shielded from the childhood trauma of losing her parents. With this memory unleashed, all those trauma flooded right all in, filling her with all that anger and pain. With her new powers she found out that her father was alive and well. She went to her hometown and confronted her father, who gave her up fearing for her powers. She also learned that she was responsible for her mother's death. The X-Men arrived to bring her back to her home but she ended up injuring Quicksilver and killing Mystique before fleeing again.
She went to seek help from Magneto but with what she did to the US Military tasked to arrest her, he denied her request and he asked her to leave instead. She then meets with Vuk, the leader of aliens who landed on earth, who explained to her that the energy that she absorbed was the same cosmic force that wiped out Vuk's home planet long ago. The energy was focusing on Jean Grey's power all along Vuk said.
Hank McCoy now allied with Magneto, comes after Jean Grey. They succumb to her powers until Professor Xavier convinced her to read his memories, allowing her true self to take over. Feeling guilty she asked Vuk to take the power from her, but by doing so would kill her. Before Vuk could absorb all this power, Professor Xavier prevented this and all of them were captured by the US government troops. They were then under power inhibiting collars and placed on a train headed to a containment facility.
En-route, the train was attacked by Vuk and her cohorts with Jean Grey as their mission. Seeing that the US government troops were no match to this shape shifting aliens, they released the X-Men to even the odds. With Professor Xavier's help, Jean Grey was able to control her new found powers and saves everyone against Vuk. Jean Grey finally retakes the powers she gave to Vuk and she killed Vuk in the end. Jean Grey then vanished in an energy explosion in the form of a phoenix.
Events thereafter, Xavier's School was renamed after Jean Grey and Hank became its first dean. Professor Xavier is retired now and settled in Paris with Magneto, and while starting to play a game a chess, a flaming phoenix appears in the sky.
Admittedly it was difficult for us to review this film. We can't help to relate this one with the third X-men film, the Last Stand. There we find Jean Grey unleashing the Phoenix from within her. We wonder if this Phoenix was the same Phoenix from this movie. As we don't have that answer for you, we proceed to explain it by what 20th Century Fox did with X-Men: Days of future's past. This time travel movie turned the already confusing X-Men timeline into a fritz. We can't understand the X-men movies after that flick.
Are we in a parallel time line as a result? What happened to the story line of the movies prior? Is it still there or they are not there anymore? Do we have to accept this movie as it is or simply drop it and wait for how the MCU would handle the reboot? Will the story line be rewritten again so that they will be introduced to the MCU Phase 4? We felt that his movie, along with that of Fanstastic Four suffered a let's just do a movie and don't care how will MCU handle it thereafter. Both movies are dismal failures in story line in our books and we suggest don't go through them like we did. Stay away from this movies and simply wait for the MCU certified movies about them instead.
