Dark Phoenix Debuts to Worst Rotten Tomatoes Score of the Entire X-Men Franchise

The review embargo for the latest (and most likely final) X-Men film from Fox was lifted late Tuesday night, and the reactions from critics started pouring onto social media. Unsurprisingly, most are saying that the Simon Kinberg-directed flick isn’t good. What may come as a bit of a shock, however, is just how bad a lot of these reviews are. The majority of critics are absolutely tearing Dark Phoenix apart, saying it’s a complete misfire of a movie, even for the struggling X-Men franchise. In fact, the reviews are so bad that the film has the worst rating of the entire series on Rotten Tomatoes.

At the time of writing this review, 52 reviews have been counted by Rotten Tomatoes, and just a few of them are remotely positive. Dark Phoenix currently has a shockingly low 17% score on the review site.

Not only is that score bad in terms of movies in general, but it’s especially rotten when compared to other critically reviled X-Men films. The Dark Phoenix score is currently 30% lower than X-Men: Apocalypse, and more than 40% lower than the original big screen telling of the Dark Phoenix storyline, X-Men: The Last Stand. Those two movies are usually considered the worst X-Men team up films to hit theaters, and their scores are still much higher than that of Dark Phoenix.

The real punch to the gut here is the fact that Dark Phoenix‘s score is 20% lower than even X-Men Origins – Wolverine, which is barely even a coherent movie to begin with. A lot of folks will point to the solo Wolverine film as one of the worst superhero films in history, and that still managed a 37% score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Sadly, it looks like Dark Phoenix is an absolute disaster. There may be some good performances to be found throughout the film (shout out to Sophie Turner, James McAvoy, and Michael Fassbender), but it somehow feels as though you might be better off watching The Last Stand again.

That’s a sentence you never thought you’d hear, huh?

Dark Phoenix arrives in theaters on June 7th.