PhoenixRising

Hi, Alison! I'm glad you liked it. But I agree that it could've been better.


This is why I always say, "follow the comics." You simply cannot improve on the work of decades done by comic book writers.

sum1

It was a lot better than the critics and audiences allowed.

PhoenixRising

I agree, sum1. It was unfairly judged, probably because of the whole Disney deal.

sum1

People seemed to rush to hate it.
I think part of the problem is audiences dislike unhappy endings. The Dark Phoenix Saga doesn't transfer well to screen because of that.

PhoenixRising

Well, that all depends on how you do it. You can do the tragic ending in the right way so that it eventually sets up Jean coming back in a later film. But they didn't do it right at all. At least they got the Scott/Jean thing right.

sum1

Remember, the way it was in the comics didn't set up Jean for a return at all. That was a later retcon. In the beginning of the '80s she was just stone dead.

PhoenixRising

Yeah, I know, but you could make a film storyline that combines the original Dark Phoenix saga with the X-Factor storyline.

sum1

Lamest retcon ever. They should have left Jean dead.

PhoenixRising

I don't know. I liked 80s Jean. Less drama.

sum1

The original X-Factor team was fairly boring. THe only time X-Factor was especially interesting was in the '90s when Peter David was writing the second team for a while. But once he left it declined and swiftly became the most boring X-title. Jean was ok in the '90s, but I didn't find her particularly interesting in the original X-factor team. In her time back in the X-Men, JRJR drew her well. That worked. Her marriage to Scott was good. Her interactions with Cable and Rachel Summers. They made the most of her in the '90s and X-Men, but I could have skipped her being resurrected in the '80s and done with her resurrected in the '90s to rejoin the X-Men.

PhoenixRising

Wow, that long? I don't know if the writers would've waited that long to resurrect her.

sum1

Well I don't like the retcon they produced for it in the '80s and nor did Chris Claremont.

PhoenixRising

Well, I knew that Chris wouldn't like it, but I thought the retcon they came up with was rather logical, with the Dark Phoenix turning out to be a doppelganger of Jean. Claremont originally wouldn't have killed off Jean if it hadn't been for her destroying a planet, which made her irredeemable in his eyes. Sometimes these guys write stories like laying tracks in front of a train while it's in motion.

sum1

Logical? Logical to invalidate the portrayal of Jean throughout one of the X-Men's most classic eras? Like hell.

PhoenixRising

Well, I thought that the Dark Phoenix persona wasn't consistent with how Jean had been portrayed prior to that, during her Marvel Girl years, that's all.