Dark Phoenix and the underrepresented X-Women of the XMCU

The faux-feminist moments in films like Dark Phoenix and other superhero movies overshadow better representation.

Since the birth of the industry, comics have saturated their stories with political commentary, critical messages, and a ton of metaphors for social progress. The allegories aren’t always perfect. In fact, sometimes they neglect critical analysis, but they still serve to represent the real world and various marginalized identities.

For heroic teams like the X-Men, their stories are especially known for progressive metaphors. However, the X-Men films themselves ignore these comic book roots. Alone, Dark Phoenix reminds us of how some apparent feminist dialogue overshadows the actual lackluster representation women characters have received throughout the X-Men franchise.

You likely already know what we’re referencing. Every nerd and their grandmother is talking about Mystiques’ line about the X-Men being rebranded into the X-Women. To be honest, we agree with her. The women of the comics and filmverse are the strongest mutants and the most compelling characters.

However, this line only gestures toward feminist, when it’s performative feminism at best — this faux feminist scene distracts us from the underwritten representation the women of the franchise have seen for over a decade. But this disingenuous dialogue isn’t Raven’s fault, it’s the franchise that’s failed, fridged, and undermined tangible arcs for the X-Women.

Everything Mystique said in the film is true. However, it seems oddly contradictory that the film included this snippet of dialogue when the film itself severely underserves its women characters — including and especially the leading protagonist, Jean Grey.

We get it: Dark Phoenix is about Jean Grey and her complex cohabitation with the Phoenix. So, how does her titular film fail her? It neglects the saga part of the Dark Phoenix Saga. Instead, it acts as a CliffsNotes ode to Jean.

Both the Phoenix Saga and the Dark Phoenix Saga enrich Jean’s backstory. From her days as an extraordinary mutant to the first time she called out for help and the Phoenix Force unexpectedly answers, her tale from mutant to Phoenix to Dark Phoenix is an interstellar opera. The Dark Phoenix skipped the Phoenix part of her trajectory, which makes her origin story seem out of character and just haphazard.

Sure, X-Men: Apocalypse vaguely alludes to it. Yet, it’s a fleeting moment in a franchise that predominately focuses its screen time on Erik and Charles’ nonsense. Sure, their squabbles are notorious of nearly any X-Men comic, film, or episode, but they aren’t and shouldn’t be the sole focus of the multi-character-driven team.

The Fox acquisition, of course, complicates Jean’s original redux story. But the film side of the X-Men fandom hurts things by gifting female origin stories, then cutting them off before they can grow to become anything else. Their stories only start, and then they’re done and forgotten about.

Psylocke, Jubilee, and Dazzler are picture perfect examples of this. Seriously, what was the point of adding Dazzler in Dark Phoenix when she has a mere minute of screen time? Then, there’s Jubilee, who only exists in the XMCU in less than a minute-long timestamp. Yes, that accounts for Jubilee’s screen time in X-Men: United and X-Men: Apocalypse. Psylocke herself has a little over three minutes in Apocalypse.

One could argue that it’s nearly impossible to cross comic book arcs onto the big or small screen without losing some form of vital detail, but for so many women in the franchise (Psylocke, Jean, Jubilee, Ororo Munroe, Emma Frost, and Dazzler included) they reside in the obscure details of their vague narratives. To compare, Magneto and Professor X’s arcs have extremely detailed outlines across the past franchise and the rebooted one. This makes as much sense as rewatching the same Batman origin story — we all know who these characters are, so why reiterate it over and over rather than shed light on new and exciting characters?

Since 2000, we’ve had the opportunity to see Erik and Charles’ characters grow and how their dynamics have changed over the years. Their stories are treated as ongoing narratives that don’t need to be constrained to one film.

After all, it’s hard to condense decades of comics and character development into one film. A single film about a legend-worth of lore (e.g. the Phoenix) is a glorified consolation prize.

What the X-Men franchise doesn’t show us in terms of character-focuses stories is just as relevant as what little it does. While the franchise largely trivializes its women characters as a whole, it fails women of color, especially Asian and Black women in the franchise. Maybe our bitterness has engulfed us, but Storm should’ve at least had an origin film in some context at this point.

Her comic incarnation has wielded Mjolnir, led the X-Men, and was finally added to the list Omega-Level mutants (though we already knew she was before canon validated it). Given that the franchise is still timid to give white women ample screentime, it’s not surprising (but still very disappointing) that the franchise would ignore women of color.

And we can’t forget about Jean — the character who inspired this entire article. While she’s been featured in nearly every X-Men film, she’s also the latest woman shelved to the fridge. Yep, Magneto didn’t want to get off his butt and leave Genosha to help Jean until Beast told him that Raven died. Granted, Beast didn’t really seem that concerned with Jean’s mental wellbeing until she accidentally killed.

In hindsight, women dying to motivate Magneto to do literally anything seems like a common theme in the films. Magda made her film debut just to die moments later for the sake of Magneto’s character arc.

In fact, the filmverse conjured him up a new daughter just to add more sand in Magneto’s brooding revenge arc (as if he really needed it). Instead of ending with a bang, the XMCU ended with a fridging and an underwritten arc of how Jean Grey embraced the Phoenix.

Unlike some of the flawed comic-based allegories that grew over time, the film franchise ignores what makes its source material so significant: quality representation. Instead, it favors empty faux-feminist statements as opposed to actually taking action and giving the women characters the same quality screentime as their male counterparts.

The X-Men franchise isn’t alone in using quick pseudo-feminist moments and girl power scenes as flimsy attempts to distract us from the lack of women-centered development and sometimes sexist scenes.

Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame both fridged women, and both films also used an archetypal format to create a couple of feigned feminist scenes. Nevertheless, we still notice the Black Window debacle, the more than questionable and hypocritical commentary thereafter, and the issue of Gamora dying at the hand of her abuser.

On the other side of these the short-lived faux-feminist moments, young girls will still be able to appreciate Jean’s words and that one unifying moment in Endgame, as well as the empowering moment with Natasha, Okoye, and Wanda in Infinity War. There is nuance in any form of representation, and though these scenes are brief, kids can gain uplifting motivation from them.

Like any art form, comics, especially the X-Men comics, have always been political. Thus it is unfortunate to see Dark Phoenix end the X-Men saga with a lack of self-awareness for its own origins.