It pains me to give Dark Phoenix a 4. Not because I expected anything great out of it. And not because it’s another low point in Fox’s up-and-down management of their Marvel projects. It’s because I honestly feel like I’m being kind in doing so. The only other review that’s gotten a 4 on here is the abysmal Independence Day: Resurgence, and it only got that rating for a generous helping of good action scenes.

On that matter, Dark Phoenix has -- count ‘em -- two. It may have Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy doing all they can to keep something going, and their portrayals of Magneto and Charles Xavier will leave a high bar. But even they’re not enough here, and Dark Phoenix doesn’t deserve their efforts anyway. It’s badly-written and poorly-acted -- even its main actress can’t keep an American accent going for two sentences. It also makes repeated cringe-worthy attempts to ride Captain Marvel’s pro-feminist coat tails. But worst of all it covers a story that’s already been done on film. 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand already borrowed ideas from the Phoenix saga and did a pretty mediocre job of it. The fact that Dark Phoenix can’t even get close to that movie, tells you all you really need to know about how bad this one really is.

At least it’s a short film. Clocking in at under two hours, it at least has the decency not to treat itself with the same level of grandeur that Marvel’s headliners revel in. Trouble is, even with this comparingly short length, it still manages to fumble through tiresome scene after tiresome scene and expects us to lap it all up for the same reason of 'hey, it's more superheroes'.  It starts with a flashback of Jean in her childhood, meeting Xavier for the first time - all the while questioning her mutant self and her status as an outsider. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think this was the first X-Men film, not the twelfth. But perhaps writer-director Simon Kinberg needed to remind us what we were watching again. Who really knows -- after the lacklustre Apocalypse, perhaps he needed reminding himself.

Even so, somebody should have reminded the cast, too. For the first superhero movie to come out after Endgame, none of them -- except Fassbender, McAvoy and Kodi Smit-McPhee as Nightcrawler -- seem keen on this follow-up. Jennifer Lawrence is present here again as Mystique, and clearly couldn’t wait to be written off soon enough if her ambivalence is anything to go by. Nicolas Hoult returns as Beast and both actor and character alike are as lost as the shoddy script they’ve inherited. Also thanks to said writing Alexandra Shipp’s Storm is an afterthought with a haircut. But while Tye Sheridan’s Cyclops is about as one-dimensional as a cardboard cutout (yet lacking the range), it’s Sophie Turner -- bless her soul -- who fares the worst as Jean. There’s definitely a good actress in her (Game of Thrones was proof of that), but she’s every bit as exposed here as she was in Apocalypse. I can't see her reprising her role as Jean, but in the case of her own career progression though that may wind up being a blessing in disguise, given how capable she can be when she has some decent material to work with.

It’s telling though that even Dark Phoenix grows more apathetic about the fate of its own protagonist the further it rolls on. The entire Endeavour rescue mission -- which Marvel would definitely build as a finale to a first act -- is all over and done within the first twenty minutes. After that we have a predictable build-up where Jean gets increasingly moody until she starts blowing things up. Post-mission parties, long-lost fathers -- everything’s a target when the angst is this miswritten. And none of it really feels all that exciting because the script is so, so bloody dull. Superhero movie 101 dictates that your film should at least have a few witty one-liners or a rousing speech or two. Even Aquaman had those. Dark Phoenix has neither. Fair enough if the cast is too indifferent to give a shit. But if your dialogue has all the drama of a snail eating lettuce, then there might be a bloody good reason for why they ain’t doing what they should.

And it’s so, so painfully ‘woke’ too -- the kind of ‘woke’ that demands the quotes. Kinberg clearly wanted this movie to be down with the ‘yass girl’ crowd, which is probably why Lawrence’s Mystique has a rant where she mentions how the team should be called the ‘X-Women’ after its female members do more than their fair share during the Endeavour rescue. It’s not a bad angle for a memorable line if you can get a decent writer to sneak it in somewhere. Unfortunately, good writing is about as abundant in this movie as truth is at the current White House. It just comes across as awfully shallow, as do the rest of the film’s attempts to sound the drum for female self-pride. Perhaps if Kinberg had actually shared the writing duties with a female writer (a la Captain Marvel), we might be talking about a different movie. Instead, we’re here listening to me complain about faux-wokeness when not even the banner of actually progressive, useful wokeness should be getting carried by a beer-chuggin’ white man like me. But hey -- turns out bad movies can make an ally out of anyone.

Things only pick up when Michael Fassbender’s Magneto arrives on screen, at the point when a fugitive Jean seeks him out for counsel when neither Xavier, nor her former X-Friends, can provide any. Coincidentally, this also aligns with the film’s first decent action scene -- think metal-commanding mutant overlord encountering an army helicopter, and imagine the results that could ensue from that. But Fassbender himself really does inject some much-needed personality into this bland procession. It also means McAvoy has someone to rekindle a chemistry with -- at least, in theory. With Turner having centre stage, there’s just never enough moments of the two of them together, and far too many moments of Turner failing to emote in any convincing way. It’s good in a way that Dark Phoenix chose to be brave enough in this regard. Putting the focus solely on Magneto and Xavier again would result in this merely being just another X-Men movie, after all. Unfortunately, it puts its faith instead on all the things that don’t work - Turner as lead with bad directing, and hideously cloying melodrama as an accompanying plot device. Far from being a shrewd move, it’s a decision that frequently shows itself as more of a stroke of idiocy.

By the time we get to the final showdown between the X-Men and the D’Bari -- the evil alien race manipulating Jean to tap into the Phoenix power she’s taken in -- it's a relief to have some kind of conclusion. The climactic battle, which utilizes a train and its carriages in a number of clever ways, is admittedly a fun one with some cool effects. Now would also be a good time to mention that as the D’Bari’s leader Vuk, Jessica Chastain also deserves some kudos for navigating the poor writing and delivering an effective, enigmatic main baddie. But the conclusion of it all is every bit as flat as the events that led up toward it. It’s also horribly abrupt - abrupt enough to make you wonder if this really is the company that gave us classics like Logan, Days of Future Past and First Class. Those three movies will certainly continue to live long in the memory. And this movie will, too! Just for all the completely opposite reasons.

For all the depth of the X-Men library, you have to ask: just why did Fox make another Phoenix movie? And why one that was this bad? That’s perhaps the most baffling thing of all. Thankfully though, it’s not a puzzle worth the effort of solving. Dark Phoenix is just too dire to bother with it.